And Then

On the year that went by(e) - 2011

2012-02-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

Last year was an important year for me in more ways than one. My life’s changed considerably from how it was the year before and also how it would have been ever after if these things had not happened. This post has also been long in the making in my head and now that I have finally gotten down to the business of writing it, I am afraid I will forget everything that I wanted to say. But without getting ahead of myself, let me recount why 2011 will stay an important year for me –

The first half of the year, April to be precise, saw me take a vacation to Turkey - the pictures don’t do justice to the immense joy that this particular vacation brought – the place was exquisite (we visited Istanbul, Pamukkale and Cappadocia) and the food exceptional. The weather was perhaps the only dampener since we were stupidly under-prepared for the cold, but that apart, we completely loved the diversely exotic places, the hot Turkish tea in tulip glasses and the warm people. Most of our other vacations have been short stays in beach side places with us spending way too much time in the pool or in the room, so this one was truly my kind of vacation where we visited museums, learnt about the history and culture of the place, visited local businesses and sampled a lot of local cuisine. Big thumbs-up to Turkey then!
Immediately after the vacation, in May, I took the GMAT, something which had been on my radar for a while. I was hugely frustrated with my job and had wanted to cop out for the longest time. I had taken the GMAT in the hope that if I did well on the exam I could keep a foot stuck in the corporate door and come back after an executive MBA in case I couldn’t work out something else. And that’s what I did, I put in my papers in end-May with the hope that the big step would jolt me out of inaction. So yes, this was a significant step for me – after 8 years of IT I was getting out with a hazy (very hazy) view of the future.
At around the same time, I had spoken to an acquaintance who had just kicked off a corporate training start-up outfit in collaboration with a theatre group. I found the idea of using arts and theatre for corporate training agendas supremely appealing. I also thought that I could add value to the group with my experience in team building and mentoring to help design new content. Not only was the opportunity creatively challenging, it was also something of concrete value in the corporate world and to my mind the cocktail was quite exciting. While serving notice, I met with this new group a couple of times and well, it was agreed that I could come on board! However...
However... life made some plans without really telling me, I mean life might have mentioned casually that this could happen, but it didn’t exactly say this was happening – I got pregnant in June! Yes that sentence needs to end with an exclamation. I was suddenly in a very different situation from where I was a month back when I had resigned. We had of course discussed the whole baby thing through most of the first half of 2011, it was going to be five years of marriage plus I always knew I wanted children, I was just waiting for Mister to get comfortable with the idea. And here we were, one minute we kind of talked it out and he said “I guess I am ready” and the next thing we knew we were well on our way. And while he was all excited about the new development, it was my turn to suddenly weigh the situation against everything else that was going on and wonder what the hell just happened? I oscillated between feeling supremely relieved and excited (my most irrational fear for the longest time was that I may never have children – don’t ask why – crazy) and suddenly feeling overwhelmed with the thought that I might have just put my first step down the stay-at-home mom route which I had never considered a serious possibility for myself. I was scared, emotional, touchy and above all extremely guilty for feeling so ambivalent about something so beautiful, most importantly something that I had wanted for the longest time. Eventually though, I think the hormones settled down a little and I tried to think clearly about my options.
While taking back my resignation and serving out till maternity break was the general advice from friends and family, I decided I couldn’t do that. It would have been the most pragmatic option but I just didn’t have the courage to go that way. On the other hand, I knew that the start-up that I was going to join was still teething and it will be unprofessional of me to not share my situation before joining them. Also I knew that there was the possibility of extensive travel and the training assignments meant a lot of physical activity – neither of which would have been medically recommended in my situation. When I discussed this with the group though, we both agreed that it could be mutually beneficial to re-do the contract and for me to join them on a short-term part-time basis. We could both test the waters – and so that was that. Bye-bye IT. Oct-Dec – short stint designing training content, activities and cold-calling organizations for training assignments.
Personally, Q4 2011 was a good quarter for two other milestones – Five blissful years of marriage in November and I turned 30 in December. The love’s still strong and young. I am wiser and less boring than I was. There is another post in the making on my take on things from the other side of 30 so I will keep the words here sparse.

And there’s 2011 in bullet points. Like I said, life’s not going to be the same ever again. Professionally, I didn’t know it was possible but it’s true that I am further away from discovering if the word career will figure in my life again and if it will what face will it take. Personally, my ‘littles’ is due anytime late this month and my life’s about to be very full in a very different way soon. May 2012 be the year – like I said on my facebook page – the year of new experiences, an year that will bring time to chat with old friends, have some perfect cups of tea and the knowledge of strengths I didn’t know I possessed.

Games At Twilight

2012-01-29T23:01:00.000-08:00

Under vapour lamps on a damp seashore night

in a weather-beaten jeep on the street side

Muddy red around the wheels with yellow

moods inside -

I hear him say, only half in jest,

Tell me love, when you were born on that

dark December night, how many jigsaws died?

I let myself smile, in this play of words and sight

a rain washed rearview on my left, and a man

in simple present, on my right. All there,

not mine.

Dry amber leaves read (props in this game

only we play, rules only we know)- Let’s just

enjoy whatever it is, let’s not try to figure it out.

As if on cue, rivulets stream down the glass, frosted

with my breath and your scent. Veiled thus, we

meet in stormy ritual, encore to a full house.

Two-thirds

beneath mi amor, I am only a third above.

You see that silver sliver in the belligerent sky?

Yes? Then know that there is still a moon whole.

Not Entirely Appropriate

2012-01-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

Must have been no later than 3:15,

that hot July night, when he first visited

my dreams. I lay on my side, on my side

of our bed, facing away from you.

A forearm, not muscled, not light,

not entirely tan. Corded my waist,

not entirely flat. Pulled into that

hollow of him, I filled him with me.

His breath was warm on my neck, my

breast heavy on his arm. White covers,

soft cotton layered in muslin sheets,

lay sheer but extant, between us.

Wrapped like sushi, we waited on the

blue china spread. Not entirely still,

for the night to move over us. For the

sunlight to drown a faceless rendezvous.

Were I awake, I would have known if it

was you, or another between us.

Many times since. But I am always

on my side, with him and you behind.

Forbidden @Papercuts

2012-01-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of posts that didn't get written last year, a few milestones that weren't recorded, a lot that was left unsaid. Somewhere in between was a poetry submission of mine that was accepted for and published in the Summer 2011 issue of Papercuts - the literary magazine at Desi Writers Lounge.

Read my submission 'Not Entirely Appropriate' here and also the many other excellent submissions on the theme 'Forbidden'.

I will upload the poem as a separate follow-up post as well to keep a record on this blog.

Safar to kaatna hai, hainji? - Part II

2012-01-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

Note: This is the much delayed part-II whereby I redefine the terms "much" and "delayed". Thankfully I had saved the draft from last year, so there is a Part-II, albeit not polished.

I have never been a good deflector of direct questions and a curious incorrigible mixture of courtesy and cowardice ails me at such times. So while I should have said something to the effect of "I am really tired Sir and would like to sleep", all I actually did was smile politely and hope that it was taken as an earnest plea to be left alone. Alas subtlety and Indian men have never really jived and of course my smile was taken to be assent.

In great detail I was asked (and told) about education and occupation. At some point in the conversation I was asked "So what exactly is open source?" and in barter I was told details about the state of the tannery industry in India. With such interesting nuggets of information, I managed to swallow the last spoonfuls of my biryani and prepared to wrap up for clearance. Along with the meal, I had been served a small packet of strawberry flavoured wafers, the sourced from a local confectionery type wafers which stay on your tongue long after you have gulped them down. With no appetite for the same, I decided to pack up and leave it. But Mr. Adhyapak with a valiantly empty stomach was in no mood to see me waste food. So he chuckled and asked "Oho, that is your dessert you know - five rupees wafers - how can you throw that?" You do know where this is headed right? I offered, he accepted nonchalantly. Even as he extended his hand and took the wafers from me, he asked "Are you sure? If you don't want it, I can have it, why waste hehe?"

Soon after, with my tea were served a couple of cookies as well, which I again offered to my dear friend, but he politely declined. I was wondering why though and the answer came to me without much prodding. "You see I was supposed to attend a meeting from noon so I assumed there will be some arrangement for lunch but there was no arrangement. So I kept waiting till the end of the meeting and then I thought I will be delayed for my flight so I rushed directly to the airport. During the meeting they served packets of what-do-you-call - arre vo hota hai na, hum to sabko namkeen hi kehte hain par yahan south india mein kuch kehte hain na - aise lamba lamba lachche jaisa?"

"Murukku"

"Yes yes. So I was very hungry and I finished two packets of murukku in the taxi on the way. Then you know how so much namkeen can do things in the stomach? Hehe. To pet zara theek nahi lag raha. Hehe. I will avoid the biscuits."

While I mentally kicked my own butt for having given in to this, THIS, I continued to be the audience Mr. Adhyapak so badly craved. He went on to tell me how you could get 10 rupee front row tickets for Hindi movies in the City Centre INOX if you went at 7 in the morning. He helpfully explained that even if the movie is bad you can leave in-between without really feeling bad. "Hotel mein bhi baithe baithe bore ho jaata hai na aadmi. I come to Chennai once a month and I watch all Hindi movies in Chennai only."

Impressive.

Soon the conversation moved to how technology and television have changed our lives.

"Hamein yaad hai kaise hamari dadi hamein kahaniyan sunaya karti thi. Par aajkal to na dadi ke paas time hai na bachchon ko shauq. Poocho dadi se ki arre bachchon ko suna do kuch to vo bolti hain hamara serial miss ho raha hai, hato. Batao."

"Sahi bol rahe hain aap."

"I am very fond of stories, when you were in school you read champak?"

"Yes sir"

"Do-do rupaye mein aati thi nahin?"

"I don't quite remember", I smiled.

"Yes. I am telling you - now also if you go and buy it is only five rupees. And there are so many stories. You know what I do? I purchase one, then I read out all the stories loudly and record in my phone. Then when I visit my brother in Noida, I tell his kids I have got a gift for you! And I transfer the stories to their father's mobile, via bluetooth, so that they can listen to the stories even after I have gone. Bachche bhi khush aur paanch rupaye mein do-teen visits ke gift ho jaate hain. I have a lot of patience like that, hehe"

It has to be said, by now I was really warming up to Mr. Adhyapak. For all the sensory assault that he unleashed on me that day, he was a do-gooder at heart.

As the flight entered the skies above Delhi, I was actively laughing and talking with Mr. Adhyapak. I had let go of my prejudices and was goading him on to let me in on more of his quirks. The laughter and chatter slowly died down in eager anticipation of our destination. A wave of turbulence hit the plane and we were all rattled for a short while. In a very grave voice Mr. Adhyapak looked at me and asked if I cook. Accustomed to his oddities by now I replied "Yes, but not often." He motioned with his hands as if opening a particularly tight jar and said "Kabhi banate hain na kitchen me pyaaz lehsun adrak ki paste? To kabhi kabhi adrak ka lainda fas jaata hai na blade mein - abhi plane waise hi hil raha tha. Hehehe".

As much as I detested the imagery, I could not keep from laughing out loud any longer. While I was laughing, snatches of his explanation about air density and the physics of turbulence fell on my ears but that was not even half as impressive as the image he had left me with.

Not a minute too soon though, we were taxiing on the runway and in the scurry of passengers hurrying to hit the olympic gold in getting off the plane, I said a cheerful goodbye to Mr. Adhyapak.

In the odd recipe of the universe, I hoped we will never be co-constituents of a mixer again! But then, maybe we will.

Safar to kaatna hai, hainji? - Part I

2011-07-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

It was one of those nights where reel life spilled out from the screens into the real life and taught me why even if a sequel does all that it can to take away the sheen from the original, we must continue to patronize the original. Bharat Bhushan from Bheja Fry - 1 is such an endearing character to watch. Fresh from watching part-2 and mourning the sad choice of plot, script and characters, I was beginning to forget how utterly irascible Bharat Bhushan, the original was. Until late Thursday night where I had to endure the company of exactly such a gentleman on my Chennai-Delhi flight.

Consider the setting: The 3-hour flight scheduled for 7:30 PM was delayed by another hour. I had rushed from office and been sorely disappointed by the reschedule. You might mention that what's an extra hour at the airport but then you have never really been to Chennai airport. I had just about managed to while away the hour reading Aditya Sudarshan's "A Nice Quiet Holiday". All I wanted was a decent meal and an empty middle seat. My record of travelling is very happily skewed in favour of this - I usually manage a window or an aisle on a row where for some mystical reason either the middle is never booked or a no-show. So you can imagine the slight disappointment I felt when I reached my row to find a middle-aged very "Dilli" gentleman easing himself into my row. I quickly morphed my expression into one of extreme fatigue and indifference and proceeded to shove my hand-baggage overhead.

***

Let's call him Mr. Adhyapak.
Don't ask why.
Mr. Adhyapak had just about sat down and even before my bottom managed to touch the seat I saw him lift his legs, kick of his shoes and take off his, yes, socks. In that moment I knew this was how the flight gods were going to debit my accrued flight-fortune points. I spent the next 2 hours and 50 minutes thinking - People like Bharat Bhushan really do exist.

***

I was trying to settle in and was fumbling on my right side for the strap of the seat belt when Mr. Adhyapak proclaimed, "No No that is mine."

It wasn't.

I let it pass and buckled up, when he realized he was wrong he smiled sheepishly and started dialling a number on his phone. It was impossible not to hear him. Even if I was in row 25 instead of row 5, I would have heard him instructing his driver to come to Delhi airport. He looked a little confused in the middle of the conversation and stopped short, held down his phone and asked me if the flight would land at T-3 or domestic terminal.

"Domestic"

With a suspicious and uncertain look he told the driver to hold on because he needs to confirm. He motioned with his hand at me to give way and let him get out. With immense patience, I unbuckled and stood up to let him pass. Barefoot, Mr. Adhyapak went to the front of the aircraft and came back all smiles, armed with the confirmation that the flight would indeed be landing at the old domestic terminal. Then he helpfully explained how he wanted to be exactly sure. I did not smile or acknowledge his attempt to reconcile.

The flight attendants were milling about and beginning to give instructions by now. The plane had started taxiing. The minute the demo was over, Mr. Adhyapak summoned the air-hostess and asked "Do you give pillows?".

"No"

I seized the first opportunity I got to take out the flight magazine and immersed my self in it. I must have only flipped about twelve pages when I realized Mr. Adhyapak reading along with me over my shoulder. I deliberately chose the most boring feature in the magazine and stopped at that to put him off. I know I succeeded in my mission because the next instant he summoned the air-hostess again and asked her loudly "Can you give another magazine or the three of us have to share this?" (with appropriate fingering at my magazine). He was handed a magazine and from the corner of my eye I noticed him flipping through it with the speed of a ceiling fan. His face lit up with joy when he came across the kiddie corner page with the crossword and spot the difference games. He spent the next 10 minutes happily engrossed in both and looked up only when the flight attendants started serving dinner.

As the aroma of hot biryani wafted our way, in a sudden flash of enlightenment, Mr. Adhyapak slapped his forehead and loudly proclaimed to the flight attendant - "Do you accept credit card?".

"No"

"Oho, I don't have cash."

He helpfully showed me his wallet. I continued to ignore him and took out my own wallet. For a brief moment I considered offering him dinner and paying for it but the only thing which really kept me from doing that was the fear that I would have to spend the next two hours listening to him for he would definitely feel compelled to repay me by regaling me with his interesting conversation. If I knew that I would have to endure that either way I would really have bought Mr. Adhyapak some dinner.

I paid for my meal and Mr. Adhyapak ordered one Coke for you see he did have fifty rupees. By the time I finished my biryani, his furtive eyeing ensured I was praying that my food would stay down. I figured he had finished his Coke by the three short quick burps he let out and that was that I thought.

Except Mr. Adhyapak did not think so.

"Very long flight. We will get bored if we don't talk, don't you think?"

This continues...

The Lost World

2011-06-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

Of all the things that mark the process of ageing, nothing is more definitive than the sentence "When I was your age..". In all of recorded history, the pronouncement of this phrase has been unfailingly followed by much rolling of the eyes on the part of the listener and long sighs of resignation on the part of the originator. But well, sometimes, these things have to be said. I can only forewarn you to pick sides now and continue reading or rest your eyes and roll the mouse instead to that tiny cross on the upper right corner.

So. (I hate how I keep saying 'So'.) So. I was saying that there are three things which to me mark the loss of my times. Three things I wish my children had a chance to experience. And the first of these is the gurgle of the desert cooler. Remember that great forefather of the present day air-conditioner? Those grumbling giants on window ledges, with caged ribs and fibre padded sides? The knight in shining armour on hot arid nights? There was a ritual to the desert cooler, repeated every summer. It would begin just after the start of the new school year. Plastic sheets that had protected the cooler from the wrath of the elements (and pigeon poop) would be removed. Father would get busy on one Sunday cleaning out the cooler. My father, ever the guinea pig for marketeers, buy 2 when you need only 1 kind of dream customer, would go one up on the neighbours and while they purchased ordinary cooler pads, he would purchase khus scented 'Top-quality' cooler pads. Once he had tested the motor and scrubbed clean the side panels, washed the cooler basin with disinfectant, he would proudly wet the pads and plant them in the cage for use. Inevitably, mother, brother and daughter would be assigned the unenviable task of holding a pipe and standing in the mosquito-ridden balcony at 7 every evening to fill the cooler with water. Thus primed, the desert cooler would now be ready to rumble and roar. To suck the air out of the universe, moisten it on its way to the fan, tag along the scent of khus, and finally blow it our way through the vents in the front. The first spray of cool air, lined with a musty dusty fragrance, would send us scrambling for the prime spot directly in line with the cooler vents. The rest of the evening, through dinner, mangoes and Dekh-Bhai-Dekh would be spent with each one of us (with the exception of the Mom), coming up with sorry excuses(like I have a Maths Tuesday Test or I scraped my knee in the park or that Sharma took my office chair again today) to slime our way into the sweet spot. If all else failed, we would concentrate on the food to beef up for physically fighting it out for the territory in front of the cooler. We would even volunteer to help Ma spread the mattresses in the room to get a chance at pouncing upon it the minute it was laid. Ah. The fine spray of water riding on that cool air would make us forget the harshness of summer and school. All you wanted to do was get under soft white cotton covers and let the air wash all over you, the rumble lull you to sleep. The sweetest sleep and dreamiest dreams would follow. I sorely miss those nights. Often, while it rains outside some nights, my nose picks up a whiff of the earthy scent from the garden. The air-conditioner recycles severely cold air with a constant groan. The sheets are softer, and pillows bulbous, the days more stressful than school ever was. The mix is all the same but missing the garnish of that fine spray, the safety of that grumbling din; thus making sleep ever elusive.

The second object of my childhood affection was the telephone - with the rotary dial. It did to the senses what the iPads and tablets of today do to pre-schoolers. It was magical. I still remember the first telephone installed in our public sector colony house in Vidyut Nagar. Our phone number was 234! It wasn't just a phone. It was a sign of having arrived, a piece of the movies and one that occupied pride of place in the lobby. How I loved to dial. Strangely, the talking bit was not even half as exciting as the dialling. I would try to dial really fast, like I saw people doing in the movies to show a sense of urgency. Or sometimes really slowly, like the grandmother who couldn't read properly. I would forget to note down the homework some days just to have the chance of calling a friend in the evening to check. Whenever Ma wanted to call Papa at work, I would scream and run and say "Let me call!". If it would ring, I wanted to be the one to say "Hello, May I know who's calling?", like I had seen so many receptionists do on TV. The phone lost its appeal though when I entered middle school. As soon as you wanted to discuss, ahem, boys, parents would sniff you out and bring over some chore to the lobby. The cord ensured, you stayed put and talked in short sentences like 'uhun, yes, yes, right.' To my utter relief, phones evolved into digital pads and cordless handsets. The evolution into cellphones and smartphones is an entirely different chapter now. But the phone with the rotary dial is yet to lose its grip around my heart. I think I am going to buy myself a vintage piece as a keepsake.

And that brings me to the concluding piece - the game of 'Staapu'. Hopscotch if you prefer. I will stick to staapu. If you were to take a walk around the colony, every block of flats would have one or more of those grids with areas numbered 1 to 8. It was a girly game. Boys either never wanted to play with us, or refused to show if they did ;). We would spend hours collecting the smoothest stones, the reddest bricks and the plainest grounds for a game of staapu. We used to trade staapus for compliments or gossip. My father decided to save my friends and me the pain of having to re-draw the grid every evening and called over someone to paint a red and white one in our verandah. He argued this would let us play more and fight less about 6 being wider than 2 and on-the-line decisions would be clearer since the lines won't fade with use. I gave him a 'whatever' look but was secretly very proud of the fine piece of art we had in our verandah! The stories we cooked up about the seas beyond the end, the rules which evolved to suit the loyalties and politics of homeground. Sigh. I am sure children today are making games and creating memories of their own. At least I hope they are. But if they are spending time holed up with gizmos and computers, I will unfailingly side with Calvin's Dad and say - "Go out and Play!"

Well, while some things change for good, there are these little things that I wish had stayed just the same.

Book Review: Mayil Will Not Be Quiet

2011-06-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that if I were to show the book to my father, he would thoroughly approve because of the 102 page thickness and size 12 font. When I think back about the time I was 12 or 13, my reading habit was a cause of immense worry to my father for he fretted endlessly about my eyesight. When he realized he couldn't do anything about the font sizes in the books I usually picked up, he did the next best thing - he got the electrician to fit two tube lights in my bedroom, one each on opposite walls. This served him well in more ways than one, it has left me completely allergic to low light, especially yellow light settings thereby nipping my romantic career in the bud.

So, getting back to the book. Mayil Will Not Be Quiet is written and illustrated by Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam. It is the diary of a 12 year old girl, going on 13 and her take on the things that happen to her and around her at school and at home. Flipkart delivered the book yesterday, I was past May before falling asleep last night, I did June and July in office today (shhh - serving notice and all), August and September was done at the Shozinganallur signal on IT expressway, and I sailed through the rest into December by the time I hit home on East Coast Road. Here I am now, writing the review.

While it is extremely difficult to not be biased about this one, given my fondness for GB, her writing and her blog, there are at least three other reasons why I can't fault this book. One, Thamarai is so my younger brother. I actually had a diary with a lock (heart-shaped and all okay, gift from Befri-Stend). I wanted to tell Mayil- Listen honey, locks are no deterrent for pesky brothers. My brother opened my diary with a compass (he was 5 when I was 13) and waved it in my mother's face. While my mother chided him for opening Di's personal stuff, the English teacher in her couldn't help but scan the page exactly at the line "Today I made a blank call to Sid's house". Too much information, clearly. Well, GB - allow me to say, you got the characterization bang on. Two - I had asked GB in one of my comments how the gender issues book had segued into the Mayil novel. I want to say to her now that I completely understand why the editors and the authors chose to change the medium - I think some serious issues have been addressed in extremely clever ways and they drive home the points beautifully. I am very glad topics as diverse as eunuchs, periods, sex and sexist attitudes have all been touched. I suppose, the diary style rendering of the narrative probably made it very difficult to linger on these topics. As an older reader, and as one acquainted with GB's blog, I wondered if I was consciously looking out for these bits. Given the brevity of the entries, will the younger readers really pause and ponder on these topics as they should? I am not sure about that. I just hope as many boys read this one, as girls do. Third great thing about this book is definitely the rocking illustrations. They are such an integral part of the diary. I loved the 'inginging' and 'fatsofatsofatso' ones. I am surprised that with such natty illustrations, there was never any talk of Mayil becoming a MayilDoodil when she grows up :)

This review though will not be complete without a mention of the 'FLAMES' entry which completely cracked me up. If only you had got the girls to do that wholly pointless 'jolly' thing. Or mentioned the boys with Trump cards - it would have summed up class 8th really well!

A double thumbs up to N and you GB for writing this. I am sorely tempted to make Ma fish out my own diaries from the box-bed at home and have her courier them over to Chennai. I can compare notes with Mayil then.

This is That post

2011-06-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

For years, I thought there will come a time when I will take the call of following a whim without fear of failure or uncertainty about the future. I kept waiting for that one thing or person or opportunity that will make me feel that life beyond what I know is possible and that I can be a part of it. It was a nagging thought at the back of my head, I spoke about it here often, readers, friends, family stated the obvious question - "If you feel so strongly about it, why don't you?" And I would buckle inwards and ask myself - "Yes, Ravneet, why don't you?" I kept wondering if I am too old or too steeped in financial responsibilities, too unskilled or just plain cowardly to not be able to let go of something that gives me no joy. Some days I wished I wasn't as good at my job as I was, perhaps that would have made an alternate career choice possible when I was much younger and not 8 years into IT. If I were to join the dots, I will not be surprised if some of the open nodes lead back to the study and career choices I did make - which was engineering and IT respectively, and I am grateful for those. However, a lot of the other dots are probably quite disconnected from the linear path that has been my life up until now. The Internet, and especially blogging has been one significant contributor. At the same time, marriage (a conscious call to marry a non-ITizen rather) has been another one. The people I have met in the years past, the stories I have read, the vistas that now seem so lucrative but were beyond the realm of my awareness at one time, have all come outside of my mainstream job. Perhaps some of this is a part of what we call growing up, or perhaps it is just one of the permutations of the millions of life choices we all face in our years on earth. All these years the feeling which says go and give something radically different a shot, those senses which look at other people and think - "wow, now that would be something interesting to do", and the grandma voice which says "you will never be content with what you have no matter where you are and what you are doing", have all violently co-existed inside me. Last year has been especially painful because of a culmination of events - my mounting frustration at a job which pays decently but takes away 12 hours from me every day, hours that add no value to anyone except in some infinitesimal way to a technology client in the US, some lines of code which if I wouldn't write someone else will, some software which makes no difference at all to the life of anyone I know or care about, a hierarchy which neither earns my respect nor inspires me, my restlessness with more and more stories about people who dared to take the path less trodden, my ideas which are all rusting inside my head while others go and actually start off on exactly those, my decreasing confidence in my abilities in spheres other than writing if-else clauses and while loops, and my unfounded fears about life and marriage. I have pondered long and hard over it, chided myself for mixing my worlds, for wanting a little bit of everything, for looking at 'anything but not this' like a spoilt kid at half-eaten candy. I realized that I had worked myself up to the point where I cannot but not let go. Even if what lies ahead is hell, my journey towards it has already begun in my head whether I take the first physical step towards it now or never. I have to let go.

Said enough and many times and given the entrepreneurial times that we live in, phrases like - finding your calling, looking for your true purpose, taking a leap of faith are all being bandied about with much recklessness. It has also been made amply clear that all these choices will come tagged with a high risk quotient and none of it will be easy. We keep thinking that one day I would have lined up enough resources or enough plan-Bs to be able to cross the chasm in one long jump. But all these plan-Bs are really only small steps, nothing you prepare for can in turn prepare you for what lies ahead because that assurance never really dawns. I thought, let me publish at least a little something before I dream of even going the writing way. That happened and then I thought okay but this was just poetry, let me try my hand at actual story-telling. I wrote some, got rejected from almost everywhere. Disheartened, I thought I will keep trying. At the same time I realized that I can't just quit and write. I want to write but I also at the same time want to live a life outside a room with a desk, something that will engage me on a daily basis in creative and innovative ways, something where I can go and meet new people and have new experiences every day of work, I want to contribute in some measurable analytical way. So I thought let me take the GMAT, at least that will be a safety net, and I did. However a 730+6.0 was still not enough to assure me of a future. I kept thinking that maybe a 750+ would have really made me more secure. A jump in salary poked me again to say "Are you like really sure you want to quit this?" I kept telling myself that the day I realize "What I want to do" will be the day I will quit. And I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for that to happen. Truth is - it didn't. What did happen however was that I finally realized that salaries will keep climbing steadily making it that much harder to forego them. I will age, my optimism will dwindle and my skills will only go south. And ten years from now, at the cusp of 40 (and trust me if the twenties went in a blur, the thirties are definitely going to go past in a blink), all I will be able to do is think of distant dreams which were once nigh.

And therefore I have steeled myself, shunned the grandma in my head, and decided that I have as many plan-Bs as I possibly can, there is zilch I can do about my age and if there is absolutely anything I want to do with my skill or talent etc, it cannot be done on a 55 hour job. Even if it is another career, I need the time to sort it out in my head. I might still not know what I can do well but I do know of a few things that I want to try. The only way I am going to find out if I can do any of these or even continue to want to do them is if I take the proverbial leap and take it one step at a time. Foolhardy decisions in the past haven't really played out the way I wanted them to. Difference is all my decisions up until now were selfish for all the wrong reasons (read people). For once, I feel extremely fortunate to be living the life I am living and to have the people that I have around me. If I cannot leverage the support of my family and friends now, there will never really be a time when I can. So often I have taken decisions to escape one life in the hope that things around me would change. It really is time for me to change my own mental makeup and gear myself towards a life I want and I create instead of bumbling headlong into a world no different from the one I just left behind.

So, wish me luck.

Night Life

2011-03-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

Some nights are longer than most nights. You lie still, but awake, on a king sized bed. With your eyes closed, but your senses alive. Your ears alert to the chirrup of the crickets and the murmur of leaves on the branches of the neem tree outside. The heavy sea breeze from the Bay of Bengal, makes its way around the bungalows along seaward lanes, rusting balcony rails, while people sleep in houses with sloping roofs. In the backyard, bamboo shoots grow audibly, a quarter of an inch every night.

The fan overhead, its blades weighed down with a thick layer of dust, cuts through the air reluctantly. Reminds you of the program you saw on TV two decades ago – about the man who knows the future one day ahead, with his magic newspaper. He makes millions betting on horses with the race results on newspaper clippings, safely tucked away in his coat pocket. One day he wakes up in the morning and proceeds to read the paper as was his routine. He finds a small report in a corner of the city column about the graphic death of the ‘Derby King’, a moniker he has come to acquire after his spate of wins at the tracks. The cause of death is unknown. The worried man, with a prescient snapshot of his own death, decides he must use it to save himself. He locks himself up in the house and gives the day off to all his house help. He also decides to not answer the door and calls off all his business appointments for the day. With a firm eye on the clock, he carefully watches his own moves until it is, at last, night fall. The uneventful day gone by comforts his frayed nerves and he gives in to the call of the night. He switches on the ceiling fan in his room and lies down on his bed to sleep. Alas, if only he knew that the whirring fan was to be death’s chosen weapon that night. He watches helplessly, as the moving fan, unhinged from the ceiling by fate's cruel design, quickly closes in on the short distance between them.

Was it a dream? Did his heart stop in fear? Or did the fan really fall; mauling his body between its unrelenting blades. I don’t know. The program director left it at that, in the neo-intellectual style of story-telling, like Stephen King says, letting it begin in the writer’s mind but ending in the reader’s. All I do know is that that program on TV put the fear of fans in me.

And tonight, as I lie awake on my bed, I keep my sight on the fan while I worry about the truant sun. I measure the night’s long tail in some count entirely my own – the dripping of water from a leaky pipe, the passing of three narrow gauge trains and the muezzin’s call at daybreak. The invisible hands of time, moving in sophisticated semiconductor ways, finally declare the arrival of my hour of wakening, with a short digital beep. Relieved, I reach for my phone, then switch off the fan, switch on the air-conditioner and hit snooze.

This and That

2011-03-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

Published on AsiaWrites and thrilled to bits! One of the poems is from this blog and quite recent, the second one however, is from my old, now defunct, blog. It reminds me of my time of transition and conflict. And I revisit it sometimes to read bits about the life lived that changed me in ways that still peek out from behind the door when I think I am done counting.

I hope I keep at it, I made a small start with this and a few other poems and short stories that I have sent out. I will be lying if I said that I do not wait with bated breath for acceptance emails in my mailbox. But I also have no qualms in admitting that I am enjoying the process of writing and self-discovery so much that I am a long way away from being disenchanted by lack of responses.

I have also been deliberating, quite a bit, about taking affirmative action to live the life I want to live. My introspection, for a long time, was about what's wrong and how I feel about it. The last few months, it has been about, what I can do to change it. And that makes me happy. I went for an introductory theater workshop, met some energetic people, realized that while I am not the best of actors, I am not too bad. I re-discovered the dormant yearning to train in voice-overs and have pushed that up in the order of things I want to do. I acknowledged my love for writing and received an amazing response from a motley crowd of people. The more I think about what it is that I want to do with my current career, the more am I convinced that, by luck or by design, I am headed towards opting out.

However, the decision's not easy. I know I am not cut out to be a homebody. I need people and I need conversations. Not idle banter, but real conversations about something concrete. I would feel hollow otherwise. Even my writing draws from the people I meet and the interactions I have or see. So I am restrained by the worry of working out an acceptable alternative. The possibility of studying for a master's for a switch in career beckons insistently. There is also the lure of alternate employment which rides on three big questions - Will I be good at it? Will I want it? and Will it want me?

I am learning to stash away the various flickering lights that I catch from the corner of my eye everyday. Instead I am forcing myself to think as if this is a problem at work and let my head sort these out.

I hope this post will be the watchman of my hopes and dreams and allow me to have more faith in myself.

Logically Yours,

2011-01-21T04:07:00.000-08:00

Several hundred people will be out of jobs, if pure common sense and raw logic were standardized as selection criteria for any and every job (if office administration is reading this blog, don't take it personally). While a lot of jobs do specifically require these attributes (considering the IIM roads of glory), I firmly believe there isn't any which cannot be made better with the addition of simple logic. While there are some people who continue to operate with no heed to this essential trait, there are several others who use it innately without ever realising how much the addition of intelligence betters their chore or art.

Take this simple example. With the history of being the kid who was the queen of curiosity, and now as a girl who is forced to the cook-top in extreme times, I have over the four years of my marriage figured out the art of the perfect chapatti. And come to the conclusion that it is no more an art than it is a science. Have yourself, just the right amount of dough (correctly kneaded, which is again a logic driven process - I have only internalized recursion from my engineering books), roll out with more pressure on the right than the left thus making it rotate on its own axis, and keep rolling till you are at that thickness which any less would leave no room for the steam to rise and any more would make it confused and fat. Follow that up with a flame which exactly matches the circumference of your chapatti, let it cook enough on one side to make the top side change colour, flip it, let it cook on the other side enough to rise just a little bit, flip it again, allow the steam to build up a little and put the 'phu' in the 'phulka', depress it with a kitchen cloth (clean!) to manipulate the steam into all corners of this wheat pancake, turn it over again for the final browning and there you have it - the ultimate phulka. Now while most people would attribute this to practice and thereby call it an art - for only art gets better with practice, science needs no iterations; I have learnt, the burn your fingers with steam or with hot tava way, that all your practice is wasted if you do not understand the science of the chapatti. If you do not understand the interaction of flames with metal, water with flour and rolling pin with a flat surface, you can take your mother's aghast "Really, it is just a roti!" and frame it for your kitchen without getting any of those phulkas on the dinner plate.

Take another example. Teaching English. I don't know about you, but all though my school life there was this distinct boundary between English and Math. Math and Science teachers would look upon subjects like Social Studies and English with contempt. The language teachers in turn would look at their non-articulate, philistine colleagues in disdain. Both unaware, in hindsight, how powerful a combination do the two sides make. The most compelling lessons in English, for me, were Phonetics and Grammar, not literature(which was decidedly more appealing though). History attracted me for the motives of people past. With raised eyebrows I would think, what led you to it huh? Math, on the other hand, was beautiful to me because of Geometry. I loved the sanity of the theorems. Each figure was like an essay, to be carefully analyzed in parts. Lines joining together to form complex figures; given a few angles, figuring out the rest. Surface area and volumes while easier to memorize in 4/3 and 1/3 formulae, were equally interesting to dissect and sniff, like poetry.

Do you like poetry which you do not understand? Or a painting which could be auctioned for millions but makes no sense to you?

And that friends, is true for all art and all skills. Reading Stephen King's On Writing, (Parul's high praise on more forums than one, pushed me to get a copy in an international paperback edition since it was out of stock everywhere!) makes me believe in this further. There is a method to the craft, which does not fetter it, but only supports it in a way which allows your creepers to continue to wind themselves around it. Without that stick, your words will just hang around aimlessly, tripping unsuspecting passers-by, inviting some pity, a few expletives but mostly indifference. There is no denying that you will get better with practice. And he endorses the view. But there is also no doubt that without your toolbox stacked with the right tools, the skill to use them, the logic to know what to use when and what to leave out altogether, no serious writing can happen.

Luckless Witch

2011-01-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

I am told some are born to dead mothers, or half limbs.
Some must live to see their children die or sold to pimps.
Some will lose whatever it is that they hold close, or give
up dreams and jobs and their birth nose. Some will want
but never get, some will never know want, and regret.
Some will kill for money or lie in courts, or on dirty beds in
dingy motels. Some will endure for surnames, honour and
bowels. Some come to only go astray, some will love and
betray. There are people on the streets with no clothes to
wear, some clothes in boxes with no people in there.
Some know not what a season means, or the colour purple.
Some live thirsty lives by the sea, roofless huts in a tuple.
Some carry weights on backs and inside chests, of wood
and blood, in coal mines and under lonely breasts.

Could you not, whole and full, with the ale and muse,
and you. You with the fuschia breath and a twisted heel
on the matching pair of shoes. With a broken wand and
nameless demons, all your spells cast askew.
Could you not lament the death of luck? Just go on being
you?

My tumbler's more than half-full : BTWC Review

2010-12-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

This review is coming later than it should have considering I received a copy from Parul early last week and that I finished it two days back. But Friday night is as good a time as any so here it is. First off I want to say that I have never written a formal review so I don't quite know how to go about writing this and I am going to try to not digress too much.

Workplace books are fast becoming a genre by themselves and By the Water Cooler fits right in. It is a pacy read with contemporary and believable characters and has quite a distinct 'Parulesque' feel to it, and as a blog-fan I could spot the writing from a mile. There were a lot of funny rejoinders and situations which go "I so know that one" in your head and that keeps the book relevant and light at the same time. There is never a dull moment and I wanted to keep turning the pages to figure out where it was all headed even though funnily enough I kind of knew how a lot of those sub-stories were going to shape up except of course for Prakash's secret. The thing about modern fiction, especially workplace fiction, is that you see a little bit of you, a little bit of your cubicle mate and a little bit of your own boss in every character and the actual workplace becomes irrelevant. The story uses the specifics as props but it is always something that could have happened to you. I liked the way Parul did not overdo the domain jargon and let it be about the characters and the dynamics between the charactrers. For me the story picked up a little slowly. When you read a post on Parul's blog you expect to be hit with the funny one right away and I think it was a mistake to carry baggage from the blog to the book because the story took a while to build up. The humour started coming in thick and fast only after the characters had been delineated, the premise established and after the reader generally has a hang on all the elements. In that sense I found Parul's approach a little clinical. For a while it looked like a flowchart and I felt uncomfortable about that because I am used to effortless writing from her. But I was very glad that it just kept getting better and I think she found her voice right about the time we witness Varun's inebriated fiasco in the boardroom. I finished the last hundred pages in one sitiing (I was on a flight admittedly!) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I almost fell in love with the 36 year old photographer, a la Bridges of Madison county, I know the insecure Lardie sorts and I have friends who would want things 'exactly like that'. So in that sense the story held itself together very well and worked beautifully for me.

My two cents for Parul's consumption only:

Apart from Dork this is the only other blogger book that I have read and I couldn't help but compare. When you read a book by someone whose formal or informal work you have read elsewhere, you tend to have a frame of reference and the only way you are going to absolutely love what you read is if the tone is dramatically different or exaggeratedly similar(which is not the case with short posts, only books). While Dork almost fell in the latter category for me, BTWC was leaning the same way but stopped just short.

The other nitpick I had was about reusing the metaphors. While the wet dog expression was used more than once and probably by the same person, the padded cell reference was used by two different characters - that makes the voice unreal. I know it is a very mean thing to say and I feel awful about it, but I am sorry I fix defects for a living!

When Vini won and the Only Planet Guide to Delhi

2010-11-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

The verdict is out- the illustrious M at the Sharma household, well-known celebrity husband and father of two on Radio Parul has chosen my entry to Parul's 'By the Water Cooler' contest as one of the five winning entries. Much yayness ensues thus setting just the right mood for Diwali. Looking forward to getting my hands on Parul's new book!

In other notes, I was on a quick trip to Delhi over the weekend. I landed at 11:35 PM on Friday night and it was 15 degrees outside. I stepped out of the airplane and while I waited on the tarmac for the shuttle, the night was unbelievably lovely. An invigorating chill welcomed me the moment I stepped off that plane. The twinkling runway lights, hint of a fog, planes taxiing ever so gently into and out of the parking docks - it was a scene in slow-motion. The tip of my nose pre-empted the dawn and stole all its colour. The weariness of my heart cracked and fell from its perch with the first shiver that went through me to my very toes. The goose pimples on my arms shot up their heads to see what the fuss was all about.

As the vapor of my breath settled on the window panes of the shuttle bus and I was taken from the tarmac to the terminal, I couldn't help but sigh as it sunk into me how much I missed this city. Phones beep, people lie and tell their drivers that they are already out, they complain to relatives how it takes forever to get to the terminal since the airport is much bigger now, they don't let go of luggage straps to save time when alighting. I step out into the terminal and there is a distinct dilliness to the peoplescape. I could have never imagined that one day I will confess to missing the sight of sardars. I see one everyday, how can I? And yet it is not entirely exaggerated when I say that the sight of turbans really lifted my spirits. Young beautiful girls with stylish woollen jackets with mini skirts, bright pullovers with hot pants, big blingy bows on their hairbands, pink gloss on their lips. If that's not dilli, nothing else is. Dilli is the stick kesar kulfi at 1 in the night, the dahi papdi chaat at 7 in the evening, the cholle bhature at 2:30 in the afternoon, the garam chai and karva chauth leftover matthi at 11 in the late morning, the stuffed gobhi parantha at 9 for breakfast and the soft warm bed at 6, just before dawnbreak. Dilli is the wide roads of Chankyapuri, the predictability of Ashoka Road after Akbar Road, the going past the RML hospital, the head bow at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, the Shadipur Depot and the Ring Road. Dilli is like the daushala of an old grandmother, the lady in the the portrait of Khushwant Singh, taking in the children and the sparrows. The moongfalli chhilkas blown off the palm and the much disputed shelled neje. The garmi of pinnis and arguments. The oxymoronic show-offs who incidentally couldn't care less. The many cars, the many diamonds. The many loves, the many foods. The many roads, the many monuments. The many shrts, the many promises. The many vihars, the many nagars. The many shops, the many suits. The many kilos, the many gyms. The many weddings, the many guests. The many warts, the one home.

You will travel the world and see the many new, do the many new, live the many new, the one old will always be the you.

Dentures, Dyed and Dame

2010-06-23T03:18:00.000-07:00

Handful, only.
If I count, I could finsh by noon,
the strands of hair on either side
of the part.
Combed to perfection, glistening with
oil, snow-white hair pulled tightly
into a bun - the size of a peeled litchi.
This is her favourite ritual, all lathered
and bathed, this last detail
puts her at peace.
The wrinkles on her face re-arrange
to spell smug. She looks up and smiles,
says I am fine, let me be.
Her white chunni frames her brown face,
her hands fold as if on cue.
Hands which have folded a 90 years,
in birth, in prayer, in death,
around swing ropes hanging from trees,
in greeting and in pleas
for gratitude and for faith,
by habit mostly.

She nods along the evening keertan
straight from amritsar,
I wonder if she can really hear or
it just reassures.
They say she was once strong,
I have no doubt she was.
For its only been a couple of years
when I received from her a dose.
Keep your jeans for your house,
here only suits.
Red, maroon, green and phirozee
should be your only hues.
Chuckling grandson not spared,
he is ticked off too
when wife can use a fork and knife
Not with your hands, will you?

We ask her if the salt is right,
she nods, before the sip
In better days her rant could
tell if she was feeling well
"Thirty years but my son's wife
has no sense of proportion"
She always had to add a pinch
to her protein potion.
Indulged her, we did, for
she always sought to boss
lunch these days ain't so much
fun, when everything's to taste.

Strolls around the park, are well
a thing of the past. For years
now, the terrace it has been,
Change of scenery does happen though,
with visits to the ICU.
95 and vain, when we transfer
her to the room, she motions
for me to lean closer.
I hear an old breath whisper
"Can you bring me a mirror?"
I pull back sharply,
my vision blurs to see,
I pray and wonder, when
her age, will I have the energy?

June sunrays slant onto our bed
weightless, listless, she lies
tired on her side. Three wives,
separated by more than just a
generation
bound by the men in their lives.
Arranged around a pile of photographs
in binary tones. I leaf through
letters, picture postcards
Intrigue in my voice and my eyes.
Wife two recounts the war of 62.
An uncle lies tarred on a bypass
at the border - they named it for him.
I hold her hand and tell her I will go
someday.
Such intimacy, twixt two of her kind,
our old lady is jealous.
Shrugs away the sheet, in want of
some attention,
she breaks my moment with
her son's wife-
"Tell me too, share with me", she insists.
Mollification meets disorientation.
A memory from this life or past,
"Agiary vich chulha jal reya hai?"-
she questions, I just stare aghast.

In my head, Mistry appears in an author pic
with his Penguin glasses.
They say reading is learning.
I didn't seek to confirm.

Her indomitable spirit splits
me two ways,
I don't know if I seek for her
to go at peace
or stay.

Edited to add: She passed away on 23rd July. We called her Mataji. RIP, Mataji.

Friday

2009-10-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it amazes me how unbelievably small the world really is. People you completely rule out of your life get tied back in, in inextricable ways and leave you wondering if destiny really does have a strange sense of humour.

In other news life's been doing what life's best at - inching along. Today I walk in and think what a mess this whole thing is. I impatiently think that I cannot wait to be at that point where I can actually influence things enough to turn them around instead of being just a part of the machinery. Today I walk in and think I will quit and have babies. Today I walk in and think that I will start working on what's been a dream for 4 years. Today I wallow in self-doubt and wonder if I could. Today I walk in and consider possibilities. Today I walk in and wonder if you will help. Today I walk in and mock my fickle commitment. Today I walk in and regret how I let that opportunity go by. Today I reminisce about the day we discussed if our social context bound us. Today I go over what I said - 'it is really all the same'. Today I sit back and ask myself if it really is?
Today I walk out having sent yet another weekly status report. Today I walk out still me.

Lousy Lego

2009-05-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

Will you go first? If not,
how will I know that you want to.
Were it not for ego, dear
what will our love do?
Will I still say "Bye",
when I really mean "Please stay",
If I insist- "I am fine", will
you insist "..on my way"?
When I sit with Pamuk
and don't turn a page,
while you switch channels
with unspent rage.
Words like 'always' and
'never' and 'anymore';
Silence, weary- has
been here before.
When one and some, apiece
jostle for half of two-
Were it not for ego, hon
what will our love do?

By the Water Cooler...

2009-01-08T04:20:00.000-08:00

...rarely, because if I did spot him in the pantry, I would instantly decide I could check my hair in the loo first and come back for a water refill later.

So, this is not a lame attempt to re-cycle old posts as new. This is just an earnest attempt to send an entry for Parul's contest ahead of her book launch - By The Water Cooler. She blogged about the rules here.

For M and Parul- this post was earlier titled 'A's Assorisms' and published in the January of 2009. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since, a boat's taken me from Mumbai to Chennai and him to the shores of a land far far away. He continues to haunt my mailbox expressing eternal gratitude for my intervention in his life (This is probably a very sorry way of accepting the gratitude, but in every successful relationship both sides should benefit equally right?). And oh, his email id is - a dot dimpy at ***** dot com. It's not his girlfriend or wife, just his nick - very cute dimples you see.

10 reasons(or more) why your face sours my weekdays:

1) You have pierced your left ear and added a faux-diamond stud.

2) You wear a horrendous purple shirt to work every week.

3) You are so full of self-pity, I wonder if your vital organs are in your wallet.

4) You are 5'4", and you regularly work out. I appreciate your dedication to strive to be as broad as you are tall.

5) You go all "हम पंजाबी लोग जो हैं न, हम बहुत कूल रहते हैं" on me. Thanks dude. I knew I didn't need all the brains. My punjabi genes were all that I needed to make device drivers work.

6) You don't watch TV. You don't read. You don't follow current affairs. You don't understand jackshit about the Satyam fiasco. The only figures you understand are the number of glasses of soyamilk you drink everyday. You would probably have more but I doubt you can count beyond two.

7) You think you are God's gift to women and no woman can resist that babyface. Even a woman who is not only married but also your team lead.

8) You think your sycophancy will do you a lot of good.

9) You think I am super-intelligent which I am(compared to you anyway). But then you also think that I know everything which I don't. So when I ask a question it would help if you could recover from your shock in under 10 seconds and instead of giving me a goofy smile with the "आपको तो पता ही होगा, आपको तो हज़ार साल पहले की चीज़ें भी याद रहती हैं", could you just f***ing ANSWER me

10) Your mother has fussed over you so bloody much that you can't have the canteen food without telling us EXACTLY how delicious your mother makes the same thing(for breakfast, lunch AND evening tea). You can't go a week without complaining of catching a cold atleast once. You carry a medicine bag on you at all times, mention how at 24 you are ready to get married because you can't live with other boys(read men), how your unmarried elder brother is ok with your decision, and how having a wife who will pamper you will be the end of all your troubles.

11) You say things like 'मैं अपनी फॅमिली में सबसे छोटा हूँ. तो मुझे बच्चे बहुत पसंद हैं. तो मैं अपनी होने वाली बीवी को बोलूँगा की बस मुझे एक बच्चा देदे, फिर भग (sic) जा'.

12) You are (unwillingly) introduced to a lady manager who has just joined our group. And right after she says that she has been in the organization for nine years now, the only thing you can say by way of conversation is 'फिर तो आपकी शादी भी यहाँ पे ही हुई होगी'।

13) You come and ask me what does 'No luck' mean when I send a mail saying 'No luck with the setup'.

14) You laugh and tell me I am funny when I tell the OSC*-"Need to postpone the call by half an hour, people are late because it's raining cats and dogs here". You don't realize it is just a phrase. I don't clarify.

15) You come and tell me that I have been giving you signals that I am interested in you. I am more amused than angry so I ask "And why would you say so?", you tell me 'जब मैं एक दिन लेट तक ऑफिस में रुका था तो आपने बोला की रुकने की ज़रूरत नही है, अभी घर जाओ'.

16) Because you are so pathetic, you CRIED when I screamed at you for 15.

See, the year's already turning out ग्रेट. I am ranting here and it's unbelievably cathartic.

*OSC - On-Site Co-ordinator

Two Thousand Nine

2009-01-01T22:01:00.000-08:00

Do you also feel that 2009 will be an year to remember? We will have stories to tell which will start "It was the summer of 2009.." or "On a bright winter morning in 2009..". That kind of year? After a long time I am feeling strangely excited. A quiet assurance that all will be well, the elusive 'purpose' will be discovered, family will be happy and brighter times will be seen. More reading will be done. Passions will be heightened. Colours will be splashed, on canvas and on glass. Friends will be made and conversations will be had. There will be more smiles and lesser doubts. More optimism and lesser listlessness. The air will be fresher, the winter nippier. New places will be seen. Mouthfuls of mountain air will be chewed. The sea salts will stick to brown arms. Peace will be made with the long unstyled hair. Smells will change. More photos will be clicked. More sights beheld. Love will nudge out the emptiness. The dining table will smile. The couch will shrug off the propriety. The beds will chuckle and the bookshelf will burp.

I will be who I have always wanted to be. Now. Because the now changes. And then you can't be what you wanted to be then. Because the then will always be just that. Constant.

26.11.2008

2008-12-04T04:52:00.000-08:00

I look out over the lake beside. I decide to nag him some about Renaissance not being Marriott or Taj. It might be a Marriott property, but it just didn't cut it. To peeve him a little, I frown and say 'This looks four and a three quarters star at best, not five star'. He smiles some, to indulge the dehati in me. I am big on photographs. The paternal gene maybe, I love having lots of photographs- for all important occasions, for trips, for family times, for stayovers, for farewells, for good times, for bad times, for memory's sake, for the children to know what I was like, for me to reminisce when the children forget. So on that evening, like The Wife, forgetting the camera was just another cue to nag some more. 'You couldn't possibly love me enough if it does not occur to you to preserve memories from our anniversary'- I lament. And while he calmly nods, I just fret some more.

In minutes, there is a flurry of messages and calls. We had just about sampled the starters.

Dear God, when I said memorable, I didn't mean this.

And You, I know you don't visit here, but I Love You.

punh @ Pune

2008-11-14T03:27:00.000-08:00

A recent trip to Pune, brought on a spate of memories from five years back. From the time when we were fresh engineering graduates and had stepped out of our houses for the very first time. From the time when the training programme was so much fun that it felt wrong to be paid for it. From the time when I lost my cynicism about making good friends and letting myself go. The time when we could be in office nine-to-nine and yet find the enthusisam to trudge off to E-square for catching the 10:10 show of 'Baghban'(yes, I know!) on a thursday night. From the time when we walked the steets late into the night, quietly, while he sang 'boss kaun tha malum hai kya?'. From the time when we made dal-chawal for eleven people and joked about it being a community kitchen. From the time when come what may, every birthday had to be brought in at the stroke of midnight. When hawaldars threatened us to disppear from bus-stops, when 4 + 4 + 3 meant autowallahs would charge 'half-extra'. When champak was the bible and my notes were xeroxed(or rather jheroxed) eleven times over.
When one realtionship refused to budge beyond "just good friends"while another refused to recognize "nothing more than just friends". When you would wonder five years hence, - What if I had? and What if I hadn't?

We, the People

2008-10-31T03:54:00.000-07:00

There was this Tannenbaum title during Engineering for Computer Architecture I believe, where he had quipped something to the effect of the semi-conductor industry leaping so far ahead of software that we will never have enough information to fill all the space available. And I remember being fairly amused by the idea and thinking how wonderful that will be. When I go hopping across blogs, across continents, as great as I may feel to be a part of the information age where it is now possible to have a conversation with hundreds of people in the shortest possible time without really having to open your mouth, I am also saddened by the gulf we are leaving behind. There are debates, and more debates, and opinions voiced and battles fought, reasons demanded and clarifications sought in every single corner of the blogosphere. There is much hullabaloo about how the Internet is the propeller for freedom of speech and how if you have something to say this is the place to say it. My question is simple - Does it make a difference? I just spent a whole afternoon going through posts on religious intolerance and communal divide. I was about to reply on this one particularly to say

"Well said, I agree we all need to think of ourselves as Indians first and in terms of our communities later. Religion is and should always be just a way of life- a structure which helps you get through the chaotic years of growing up when you are too young to understand vice but old enough to know that Mumma does not like it if you lie or steal or hurt a classmate. A structure which lets you sleep peacefully after a quick prayer to the powers above on the night before the exam. It is so much easier to mutter the one you know than sit down to think- oh I am an Indian first, so I have a choice to pray to 356 different gods in 25 different languages and let me see which combination I want to pick! Religion is a list of FAQs which tells you the how-to's of birth, death and marriage. Religion is the Quick Help in times of heartbreak, examination, calamity and loss. Religion is the Navigator on the crossroads when you really don't know where to go because you can't think clearly. Religion is merely a matter of convenience, and more so personal convenience. Where two religions meet, a third is born- an amalgamation of the best and fittest features of both. It is only when we place religion over humanity, when we think that prayer alone will deliver us from all sins, when we feel that because there are so many of us we are powerful, or that because there are so few of us we need to be careful, or that because they constitute a significant votebank, let's call them a minority, that we truly begin to lose perspective. We cannot undermine the power of religion and do away with it, but at the same time we cannot personify religion and use it as an alibi for executing our evil plans."

But, I did not comment. And the simple explanation is indeed that I am just saying what everyone else has been too. There really is no difference. We all belong to a relatively narrow socio-economic group, we are all nearly in the same age group, we have all been shaped by very nearly the same influences and we all think objectively. An anonymous commenter here and there or a hatemail once in a while is not representative of humanity. But sadly, the problem really does lie in such minorities. The minority of people who chose to be bigots, who let religion colour their vision, who let their beliefs infringe upon everyone else's. To the ones who are well-educated I really have nothing to say. The problem is that there are vast numbers who are not. And all this sermonizing and rich debate is hardly reaching the ears it is meant to. Agreed each one of us personally benefits by the spectrum of thoughts and opinions bandied back and forth over ethernet cables, but my conscience still asks - Does it really help? I know all the blah about each one of us doing our bit, but is there any guarantee that all this patience and assimilation is going to yield any results? We have NGO's working in the space of child education, women empowerment and rural finance. Do we have one which takes communal harmony to the grassroots? When a politician can inspire a mob and incite violence with nothing but communal rhetoric, do we the intelligentsia have a counter-plan which goes beyond a few bytes on a web-server? Or for that matter a few sound-bytes on the news channels? The media has evolved from a reporting platform to one which is now being used to rouse and form public opinion. It has lately proven effective(although it is debatable how much), to pit public opinion against individual stance and bring justice where due. We know that for every Jessica there are thousands of others who can't yet lay claim to justice. Still it is a start. But is the media as effective in delivering justice when there are no faces and no names, just I, the People against You, the People, ready to lay my head or slay yours if required? When it is no longer about individuals, and when a mob carries out the bidding of one? When actions are interpreted as personal attacks and are encouraged to be returned by fatal ones? Do we have an answer? The politicians might not be all nice and fair and just, but they have the power of speech. And in a country where a low percentage is educated, and a measly percentage has access to media where such debates flourish, I feel sorry for the vast amounts of passion and space wasted over such issues. I feel inadequate and hollow and cannot even muster the effort to comment on any such post. I don't feel the need to voice any such opinion of mine on my blog because I give you guys the benefit of doubt. I believe that we all believe in fairness. I believe in the fact that people like to think logically and objectively. I like to believe that even if someone disagrees with me over something, he won't come and kill me. I also like to believe that I am tolerant enough to hear somebody's divergent opinion and to not let that raise my heckles enough to stab him. I might hate you for what you have to say. You might completely detest me for my soppy poetry. But are we fanatic enough to cause lasting damage? Is this piece going to discourage the next intolerant bigot who chooses to target my husband on the local train because he wears an obvious symbol of our religion on his head? Will I have the courage to sit and debate about this if this issue were to move from the newsroom into my house?
I don't want to end on a pessimistic note here. So here's a link to an honest and inspiring post about really making a difference at the level where it is needed the most.

do chai

2008-09-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

It is a weekday morning
and while the water is on the boil,
I add a spoon and a half of
tea and 2 spoons of sugar.
Too late, I realize
you are away.
And just like that, I wonder,
if ever,
my absence goes dhappa on you
when you take me for granted.

Playin' Tag

2008-07-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

So, this was a tag that I had received long back. And since being tagged isn't routine for me, I almost forgot all about it. I have free time on my hands today, so I have decided to complete it. Moreover, I scare myself every time I read posts like my last one, so I will do the tag just so that my page appears more 'regular' to window-shoppers.

Ok, here goes, 6 quirks about me (was it?):
1) I can be extremely extremely sarcastic. It only happens when I am really upset. And that happens only with people who are really close. Worse, I agonize over the things I say for days on end.

2) I hate taking obligations. I wouldn't even ask my best friend for a ride unless it was offered.

3) I have received some really weird awards in my life. From the 'Youngest English-Speaking student'(and I quote!) in Prep to 'Best Outgoing Student - Ethics and Human Values'(yeah, have you ever heard that one?!) in engineering college to 'Spot Award - for Unravelling the Installer Whitebox Code' (see, did you know that they give you an award if you just understand how a piece of code works and tell a few others about it?).

4) I am great at problem-solving. But I suck at strategy. In tech terms I actually enjoy debugging more than writing code. I love history. I hate sci-fi. I love puzzles, quizzes, crosswords. I hate Monopoly. At more subtle levels I think it is a manifestation of my need for everything to have a logical justification rather than having an end in sight and manipulating the means. In not so subtle terms, maybe I am just plain dumb.

5) I laugh at all the wrong times. Like when something happens which could have been potentially dangerous, even before the person has had a chance to reconcile to the fact that he is fine and realize that the situation is actually funny - my mind compiles the whole situation so fast that I am laughing even before I have realized that everything is fine. My brother has seen this too often to count. When the one time his knee got stuck between the balcony rails and instead of calling my parents for help, I was doubling over with laughter in the balcony or when I was trying to get the Kinetic off it's stand with my brother sitting on the pillion seat and I accidentally let go. Poor thing fell down with it and got stuck under the Kiny and I couldn't make it stand upright partly because it was so heavy and more so because I was laughing so hard.

6) Much as I hate it, I cry easily. I cry if I see someone else crying. I cry when we swap childhood memories at family dinners. I cry every time I watch Kuch Kuch hota hai. I cry when I am absolutely right. I cry when I am grossly wrong.

And, I can't stand wet feet, (pun totally unintended but nice!). I can't be bare foot either. The minute I am out of the bath, I am on the bed, yes, ON the bed and walking around to dry my feet. Don't go yikes on me there, I keep my feet very very clean. Which is why they can't be wet. Or bare.

And and, I can't cheat! I can't cheat to save my life. Sample this. Fifth semester at college and there was this guy who used to sit beside me 'roll-number wise'. One EM exam he told me he was going to cheat from me. I said - ok, as long as you don't disturb me while I am writing and keep copying whatever you can see, I am all fine. So the exam starts and he was such a wonderful 'cheater' - he didn't poke me even once. He kept copying from me as much as he could and simply turned the page every time I turned a page and started copying from there on. And when I was finished he asked me to turn to the parts he had missed, which I very quietly did. And then he tells me- that that numerical on page 2, I think the answer is 120,000 Ksomething while I had calculated it to be 1200 K. Dismissing him, I anyways recalculated and turns out he was right. So now I am in a fix- do I correct this? but won't that be cheating, because if he had never cheated from me, he would never have told me and I would never have guessed? So yes, I just let it be knowing well enough that I had the wrong answer. And yes, he scored more. That also happens to be the only day in my life, when my dad expressly refused to acknowledge that I could be his daughter.

I thought this one will be difficult to do because I am such an 'off the shelf' person. But looks like I can go on with this some more. Na, lemme save some for the next tag :)

Thanks Veda, this was fun. And I tag now? Do I get to tag? Can I tag people who haven't squeaked in over six months? Sid, Ritz and Ariel.

My Pick

2008-06-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the couch, hunched over a book, looking all virtuous. Yes you. NO, don't give me that "Who me?" look. Sometimes, Ms. Naivete appeals to me and asks me to let you stay on for a while. Boarding and lodging at my expense in my space. And it is fun too. You are charismatic that way. Your sense of humour is the finest I have seen in a long long time. I would have been especially elated if you were on my team. You an me, on the same side. If only. You are incisive. You are perceptive . You have a quality which I deeply admire in men. You know when to shut up and make a woman feel good just by looking at her. That ocular equivalent of a girlfriend's "I so know!!!!". You even talk to me in the go-weak-in-the-knees-baritone. Effortless. Suave. Mystical. The "I am there". What's more you are hand in glove with that grand old chap Lyfe. When you are around, you take me out every evening. Dinner and dessert and walks and the works. You even sleep in my bed and let me tuck in my thumb in your half-sleeve.

But do you know why you are not on my side? Did you notice, I said "when you are around"? Do you know how when I look up from our conversation, the smile which lingers from the last thing you said, gives way to a painful jerk of recognition?

Mr. Reality stares me in the face and silently whispers "Again?". I know I am caught. And you aren't even man enough to stay on and defend. You don't fucking care.

You, Mr. Delusion, could do well by staying away. Mr. Reality is not half as charming, not even a quarter as romantic, but atleast he is honest. And forgiving. And not so bad really. The best times might not match up to "my high of the day", but the worst times are not really the nadirs you make them out to be.

You Mr. Delusion might be Prof Lyfe's pet, but Mr. Reality always tops his class.

Of Hopes and Croaks

2008-06-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

The township was a low-lying area. Every year, a fortnight into school after the long summer vacations, we would have what we called 'Rainy Day Holidays'. They came unannounced, with brilliant weather and everybody stuck at home for atleast three days. Mumma would wake me up and ask me to climb down from the bunk and get ready for school. The fact that she could barely manage to hide her smile, and that she was not hurrying around trying to pack tiffins, make breakfast, lunch and get ready for school herself should have been reason enough to rejoice, but I would always jump down and run to the window to check. It would have rained through the night. I would have prayed non-stop to bhagwanji the previous night to let it be the two days of rainy bliss with no school. One look outside and it felt like the house would be afloat in no time. It was a river of muddy water outside. Everybody hanging out of their balconies and windows, with ear to ear grins. Since it was the company township there was never really any fear of being cut off from electricity or drinking water or any such basic necessities. After all, we made all the electricity, we better always have enough for ourselves. The admin people would come around distributing quinine tablets to prevent malaria, and gum boots to all houses. I loved the gum boots. I would wear my dad's while he was busy getting ready to visit the site, and romp around(wade?) in the verandah which was full of garden refuse floating about. Mom would scare me with terrible skin infections, water snakes and insects. Infections I could handle but snake bite? Suitably scared, I would step right out. Friends from neighbouring houses would walk across and we would spend idyllic mornings looking at the water flowing past. The landscape looked the same for days together, water, brown, with occasional leaves and branches flowing past quarters which were all the same colour of yellow that only public sector townships every-bloody-where have. I would stare at it for hours. If its rain, I can stare. While mom fried finger snacks inside, my friends and I would sit out on the porch, the water being level with it, and with one polythene each, we used to try and catch baby frogs. Yes frogs, baby frogs are actually as cute as their older fraternity is slimy. We even kept score! My fascination with animals has quite strangely been limited to just baby frogs.

It has been raining here in Mumbai the whole of last weekend. I got up in the morning with the same anticipation today, after years. Quickly kept the pan for tea on the boil and hurried to the living room window. A split second pause and a quick prayer, before peeking out. In my head, my mom was standing behind me, smiling, waiting for me to discover the rainy day holiday myself.

Wet roads, but no muddy water rivers. No gum boots. No quinine. No baby frogs. No mom.

God's busy answering some other kid's prayer I guess.

geela mann shayad

2008-01-23T21:39:00.001-08:00

College was never exactly idyllic- generous portions of DTC and reality checks do not make for happy memories. Nevertheless, on days like this, when the weather is conspiring against order, I miss the times when I could stare out the window through a digital electronics lecture, turn around and say - 'Let's please go!'

i++

2008-01-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

Some days you are
malloc'ed from the heap.
Assigned, Re-assigned,
diligently free'd.

On others,
an instantiated object.
Private Variables.
Public Methods.
Polymorphic
Abstract
Encapsulated
For days. For Weeks.

Not Lyin Eyes, These

2007-12-14T02:50:00.000-08:00

The eyes?
They Talk.

You know, like the little girl
with a secret?
You raise enquiring brows,
she shakes her head
furiously. And then
right after, bursts into a giggle.
Looks here and there,
at him and at her,
and leans closer to whisper
in your ear.
Like that?
The eyes, they talk.

Like the skin of the girl in love
Like the laugh lines of a life well-lived
the rafu in a pair of jeans
the yellow of a once white dress
the pink of the nose on a cold cold day
the insulin pricks on an old old thigh
the dried flowers from the college diary
the portrait(16" x 20") on the bedroom wall
the tanned faces in Pattaya photos
the hurried walk of the harried housewife

the mother's 'Come sometime' over the phone
You know how that talks?

Like that.
The damned eyes- They Talk.

Insomnia

2007-11-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

I stood there beside my bed, wondering what kind of course requires this kind of a test. I had a plate of chicken salami in my left hand. The bait? Do whales even like chicken salami? I decided to just get it over with. So I kept the plate on the sidetable, took one sliver of chicken in one hand and with the other I started to look under the mattress. I found one fish which looked remarkably like tuna if I can trust my limited knowledge of marine zoology. I wedged open it's mouth and put the piece of chicken inside. It appeared dead. I was still wondering what is the point. I looked at the instructor hopefully. He shook his head. Whale. He insisted. I began again with another piece of that darned bait. This time around I saw lots of those tiny fishes which they sell on kolkata streets at 7 in the morning. And a miniature shark. Like the one I have in the aquarium back home. I was tempted to bait that one and run it by the instructor. Instead, I continued to look. [This living in an east-indian city- it has it's disadvantages. Before you know it your room is awash with the morning sunlight. And when you step out of work, it is always way past sunset.] At dawn, all the small fish had disappeared. Even the tuna and the shark were gone. And I was fairly certain there was no whale. But the instructor insisted there was. He wouldn't let me sleep.

Till I find. The Whale. Under my mattress.

Sorry, Kid!

2007-10-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

EXploring Interest in Technology and Engineering. A science camp for middle school girls is on in my organization and I have volunteered as a facilitator. The objective is to give them a peek into life as a techie and into the sphere of robotics, gaming, virtual worlds and other emerging trends. Today was the first day and the facilitator for the introductory session asked the group of girls to enumerate the technologies they use in everyday life and which they are reasonably comfortable with. The first minute saw the following as popular responses:
-Internet
-Playstation
-Cell Phones
-I-Pod
Yeah, I know you know what is coming next so I will not state the obvious. Suffice it to say I am 25 and I felt incredibly old in that room today. Of these four, a playstation is something that I have still never used.
As I was standing there in a corner near the front while the session was on, I was looking at the faces of these girls. School uniforms, hair tied back, a few spectacles, a few braces, a few kohl-lined eyes and a couple of manicured hands. And every now and then, an enquiring glance, a flash of understanding, a smirk at a grammatical mistake, or a knowing smile at an esoteric pun would make me nostalgic of the me back then- arrogant, full of myself, fairly intelligent, bespectacled and average schoolgirl looks. Has it really been that long? It feels like yesterday that I was sitting in the audience during one such lecture, listening intently, some remark taking me places with my imagination riding its wings, my mind wandering to the cotton sari of the girl standing in the corner, or wondering if I will ever grow up to be funny enough to involve an audience of 13 yr olds. Eye contact with one such girl and this time I was thinking of what is going on through her head. Do I look authoritative to her, or kind, intelligent or dumb, would she want to ask me where the restroom is, will she wonder if her english sounds smart enough, will she worry about what I think of her, does she even know that at this moment I am thinking about her, have I really grown up this much? There is this problem that I am having with being 25 at 25. When I was 30 at 18, it was easier, because I didn't have these issues with growing old. Now I do :) Maybe I should have kids of my own. Has to be all the mommy blogs that I have been frequenting. This might help come to terms with being grown up enough to look at 13 yr olds and say "kids!".

Or, I could go and have Mr Pops. Purple and gold Cadbury's wrapper. Lesser effort and instant gratification.

Mr Pops. Mr Pops. Mr Pops.
(Had I chosen kid, I would have stopped at 2)

Phase Error

2007-10-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

Do you know what your face looks like? I sometimes close my eyes and try to think of what I look like. But I can't ever get very far with it. Everytime I look at a snap of mine, I go -Oh, is that what I look like? My teeth, my nose, my hair, my skin. Sure I look at the mirror every morning, every evening, every night. But I still get surprised every time I look at a snap. Like somehow it is different from what I look like in my head. Like your own voice you know? The first time you record your own voice and listen to it played back to you. You do a double-take because it completely catches you by surprise. It is nothing like what you hear when you talk. It is different and you feel a little cheated. Like you don't live with yourself, within yourself. And when you look around, no one else seems to be surprised at all. Because that is exactly what they have been hearing or seeing all along.
Askew is the word that comes to mind.
Like Hermione? When I read the first book, when the movie was not out yet, I went through the whole book, reading her name as Her-me-on-e. When the movie came out and I heard her referred to as Her-my-nee, I felt a little cheated. Like I don't know her as well as I think I do. That is how it is with my looks and my voice. When I have either of those reproduced for me, I feel like I know myself less than I think I do.

Phi. I mean Sigh.

Delayed

2007-10-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

Ammani's 24-hr challenge here.

910. Another twenty minutes to go before the next one arrives. She walked to the other end of the bus-stand, where the shade was intact and provided relief from the afternoon sun. She had been taking the same route every weekday for three years now. Sweating and people watching under this same stand for most part of the year. The winters were different though. She could buy roasted peanuts with the smell of old newspapers and hot sand in every kernel. They helped pass time. But May! An Ikon rolls down the road and stops across from her. In front of the McDonald's takeaway. The engine is purring. The AC is on. He is waiting. She imagines what it is like. To have someone wait for you in an air-conditioned car on a hot May afternoon. To not feel obligated when asking your parents for the auto fare. To not have someone's crotch push against your backside in a crowded bus. To not have the conductor leer at your cleavage when your dupatta falls off one shoulder. To not have your self-respect fight you over the ladies seat when your feet are killing you with period cramps. To not carry a recycled cola bottle for water. To not worry about renewing the monthly pass. To not worry about the wind messing up your hair. The sweat wearing off your cheap deodorant. What is it like, to wear sunglasses without having glances thrown at you. To not worry about always carrying enough change. To always looking so fucking neat, like you just stepped out of a salon. What is it like?
"nau-so-das nau-so-das nau-so-das...". Her bus arrives. She walks over to hop on. Every step feels like lead. Her eyes hurt with more than just the sun. Her energy sapped with more than just the heat. Her heart disoriented with more than just May.

Jet-lagged. After a flight of fancy.

Pensieve

2007-10-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

Have you had that moment today which will at some point become a memory? Did you laugh at your stupidity or at someone else's clumsy gait? Was there a song in the background which will stay in you head and re-appear at some time in the future like the quotation you scribbled on a piece of paper and which fell out of your copy of the OED while looking for the meaning of 'pewter'? Nothing exceptional about the moment either? Just the moment. Some random moment which just comes to you and makes you smile. But in that moment, when that moment was coming into existence, when you were living that moment, did you realize that it will become a memory one day? A pleasant memory which will come back to cheer up a bleary morning? When it will make you re-live the idyllic setting, the bright sun and the clear blue waters? The moment is effortless. Unfeigned. Alive. It is so fresh you can hear the tinkle of your own laughter and the sparkle of indulgence in his eyes. Perhaps that is what makes it magical. Not caring whether this will be a memory on the morrow, what will be the memories on the morrow or whether there will be a morrow at all.

Perhaps you should let your fingers dig some more into the sands, your legs stretched out just that much more and let the last wave kiss your toes before it disappears noiselessly in the depths of yore.

Order, Order

2007-10-08T02:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone's allowed a bit(e) of bollywood, no? Sorry.
Ahem, moving on..

I am actually a fairly tolerant person. People watching is an extremely interesting activity and provides more than a handful of occasions to pronounce judgements which ofcourse just helps. The good thing is that I am usually so unruffled on the surface, that sometimes people unknowingly let their guard down and give me a peek at the real them.
Well for starters, like I mentioned here, I judge know-it-alls. I am fairly well-read, and aware but I usually keep my trap shut unless I know exactly what I am talking about or am in the middle of a discussion. I stopped participating in debates during school because I realized that on most topics I was always treading middle ground and found it hard to take sides, and felt that I was thus incapable of honestly defending myself without resorting to oratory gimmicks. And here I find these googlesque characters who refuse to respect the listeners' and their own sensibilities by voicing their opinion on everything from global warming to why-sushmita-sen-has-seven-boyfriends and solutions thereof. My Mister-Marketing calls this CP which is an acronym for 'Class Participation'. Yeah, I remember the types, the ones who had to ask because apparently 'asking' is a religion and not education which many of us were led to believe. And Silence being Golden? No hear?
Religious/Communal Bigots. I am fine with all the jokes parried between friends. I have zero issues with stereotypes because they are mostly well, stereotypes. We might or might not believe that there are exceptions, but light-hearted jibes never did anyone any harm. I have lived with Santa-Banta jokes all my life. Infact sometimes, my Dad has to be unceremoniously told to stop cracking any more because we are the Santa-Banta Ok? But what's with the intolerance? I hate it when people make disparaging remarks about communities and other sects in complete earnestness.
Then there is this other type- the manipulative players. They come in all forms. From being nonchalantly manipulative of someone else's time and energy to the subtle ones, who play mind games like a virtuoso. I find it really difficult to be with someone like that. Infact, even if I am not directly involved, it irks me to see someone else being pushed and shoved by a manipulative 'friend' or colleague. I am all for standing up, and not letting people push you around, but sometimes it is more of a choice that you make out of respect and in the interest of sanity than a sign of weakness. Besides, sometimes the issue could be so trivial, that one would want to ignore and let pass than actually take up cudgels for it. That still does not discount the seething fury I feel within for the perpetrators. Most vile, this type.
I also mildly judge people who refuse to take hints. If I am saying 'some other time' to your dinner request, I subtly mean 'I am uncomortable' or a plain 'I just don't like you'. Get it ok! And get off the phone, because I am done talking. If I have known you 5 years but your orkut status is acquaintance, and you have at no point in the past had an hour long conversation with me, it is unlikely that I am going to have any such with you in the future. And I am much more comfortable talking across the table than over the phone. So please, when I have nothing more to say and you have a hundred other people you are going to relate the same incidents to, skip me.
Phonies! How could I forget! They put on an accent the moment they feel they are making an important point in a serious discussion. They act like they are concerned when you know that they actually don't give a fuck. They act and whine like their world is falling apart because nobody wants it their way, even though they know that in the end they wouldn't really have it any other way than their own. They offer to cluck their tongues when they couldn't possibly know a thing about how it really is. They rant that women are cynical about getting into relationships without the 'commitment' word anywhere in sight while in reality they would rather take home the girl 'who hasn't been around too much' for that is what mummy would like. Shame really. And please count me out of your conversation when you have the phony cap on.
And finally, the spineless. This type makes me vacillate between pity and anger. As much as I judge someone for their failure to stand up to what is right as opposed to what is 'done', I also at some level know where such people are coming from. But there is a very thin line between discretion and cowardice. And at some point in your life, you have to get up and take a stand. And the good part is that, once you have had the courage to do so, you will find yourself wondering why you didn't do it earlier.

I don't want to play spoilsport here and not tag anybody else, but since this is my first, I would like to keep it open. Besides this one has taken so long to come, I am sure a hundred thousand newer tags are awaiting everyone by now.

Garage Sale, Anyone?

2007-09-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

So Ariel tells me that I have been tagged.
That's a first for me but I am terribly pleased with myself for not feeling ambivalent about taking it up. Some days when I go through my posts, and if incidentally it is one of the happy not-quite-that-much-wrong-with-the-world kind of days, I find myself very dull. I quite enjoy the writing mostly(counting out a few cringe-worthy posts), but the mood is terribly serious on a sub-liminal level. And this is not the first time that I am thinking about this, and mine is not the only blog which makes me feel this way. Infact, blog-hopping over the last three years I realized that elsewhere too, there are only three kinds of writing which are striking(or maybe just to me)- soulful, intelligent and humourous. I mean there is a lot of bad poetry out there on heartbreak and loss and a lot of extremely unfunny pieces labelled 'Rib-Tickling' and a lot of know-it-alls who have to have an opinion on everything under the sun(The kind of people I judge #1), but really, the kind of writing I do enjoy reading, broadly falls into one of these three categories. An intelligent knowledgeable take on an issue that I might be ill-informed about or an interesting debate on similar lines, a witty read which manages to elicit a chuckle and no less, a soulful beautifully worded piece of poetry which leaves me wistful for a couple of minutes; so basically just that. And I often wonder why happy posts don't read so well, or don't leave you thinking about them long after you have closed the window, and why can I not bring myself to write about something like that. Why don't I ever read a post, and find it both interesting and happy? And why does something like that fail to hold my attention? Am I subconsciously seeking intensity, and by corollary connecting to it? Because the last I knew, I was consciously seeking release, light-headedness, and abandon. Ironically, that release is what we promise oursleves at the end of this journey, when we purge our souls through rhyme, and somewhere in the intensity of the rhyme, it becomes all about words and word-play and ceases to be about you. And at that point I think, we commit ourselves to this connect, for life.
And so even though my own words have dried up, because I have nothing morose, or intense or funny to say anymore, I cannot manage to sever my connect with those who are still there, at it. Which means, I will always read, but I shall not always have much to say, or to hold your attention. We don't dig happy posts remember?
Who knew, happiness could be an end to something? Really.
Well, it almost is.
And so, people, (no I am not about to close shop, yet (and yet again!)), this place needs to open a few windows and feel the balmy breeze on its face. This place needs to take in lung-fulls of fresh air and make those alveoli smile. The mouldy musty smells need to go. (A certain packet of naphthalene balls is going to be verrrrrrry happy).
Some nights, we might want to go right back, to close the windows lest they banged in the storm and the glass broke, but we shall persist. At least try to. This place and me. We will add stoppers, and slide deeper under the covers, and write to you from there, and you might feel all closeted again, but mostly this place will get back to being bright and happy and hence devoid of all intensity. Or if we figure out a way of being intense and happy, then we shall have to take back what we said in this post.

And maybe add a statcounter?

P.S.: The tag coming up next. People I judge? Hmmm, let me chew that one for a while and see if I am the sorts. No, not the judging sorts, that I know I positively am, no not like positively judging, I mean I am positively the critically judging sorts but I am not sure if I am the writing about it sorts.
Sigh, Recursion! The world will be such a better place without that evil, and I never could get it right.

#1: Give

2007-09-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

I tell him to not talk to me
(till tomorrow morning)
.Ever.
That inner voice whispers
.Psssssssst.
"There is only one lifetime"
.Only.finite.minutes.
And when I am old
~Wrinkled~
I don't want to hear myself say,
"But, you wasted that night"
So I set pride aside
and->reach->out->first
To make things right.

30 at 18

2007-09-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

18 to 23? you know that age when you can colour your hair and flirt? when you can be silly, when you can giggle and when you can party and learn to party-dance? when you can shop at Janpath for trinkets and skirts? when you can start conversations with "do you know what happened.."? when you can agonize over a pair of sunglasses? when you can be so superficial, you are almost 1-D? Yeah, that age. I skipped it. Completely.

I was 30 at 18.

When everybody else was having their first drink and kissing their first boyfriend, I was sitting in my room, reading and thinking. Of love, of marriage someday, of forever and a day. Of conversation, of depth, of beaches, of kids. Of teaching, of revelling. Of flowers from the morning jog, of rowing boats on a calm river. Of home baked cakes. Of calls at office, of weekend trips. Of lazy saturday afternoons, of painting bedsheets. Of windchimes in the background, of the whistle of the pressure cooker. Of airy houses, of mera wala pink. And everytime that I stepped out of my room, into the world outside, I was defeated. You are optimistic for a while, but its funny when you assume you know where you are headed and realize one bright morning, that you were just kidding yourself. It breaks your heart, because, you might think of yourself as 30, but your heart is really just 18. Eighteen. And you can sob into the pillow for nights at end, and resolve tomorrow is a new day and pretend to be light hearted and happy, but you come back to your room and refuse to change. You blame the world for being juvenile. You blame the 18 year olds for being 18. You expected more. They fell short of your expectations. You thought this couldn't have been skin deep really. But it was. And you blamed them for it. For not seeing the real deal. Because you think only you are real. You think of yourself as a higher being, because you have depth. Because you are intense. Because you read books. Because you think. How can they not see it? Not all. You dont expect 'em all to see it. Because the basis of your theory is that not everyone is like you. Infact, you are a rarity. And your theory also says that not everyone will recognize that. The one/ones who would are themselves a rarity. So you are optimistic, and patient. When the rest of them are showing off their halters, you are smiling inwardly with a sympathetic 'tsk,tsk'. Because he is there, just around the corner. You can't see him yet, but you seem to know he is there. The one who knows. The one who will recognize. You believe. And when you do turn around the corner, he is already holding hands with someone else, and walking away into the sunset. But, but didn't he see? He was the one who was supposed to, right? How could he not? And you watch KKHH over and over again. And everytime Kajol flings her dupatta in the air, at the station, your heart goes out to her. Because you too now believe, nice girls finish last. One would expect you to learn and to grow up. But when you are 30 at 18, there is not much growing up you can do. Infact, if you had even one sensible friend, he would tell you to step back, to let the world's problems be, to shrug. Which ofcourse you don't. You just hope and dream of the day when you can give it right back. You sincerely wish everyone well, and you are not vindictive in the least, but you hope that someday, they will see it as it was. But do you learn anything here? They will eventually grow up yes. But do you learn to not gallop and instead slow down to a trot? To just look away and enjoy the scenery?

Yes, you do. Because if you don't, then you fall short of your own expectations. You have always been honest to yourself. When you were shattered, you learnt to cover it up, but you couldn't stop yourself from letting your pen go at the diary. You learnt to smile and watch movies and crack up, but you still came home and soaked your pillow. And after years of doing that, you meet someone who teaches you to unravel, to uncomplicate and to think, but think simple. Who helps you shrug. Who says it is ok. Who deromanticizes love, and hence heartbreak. But someone who still replies "With You", when you ask "Where?"

You were a whisker's breadth away from geting sucked into an exponentiation of your own making. Because 2 + 2 would have been 4, then 8 then 16 and so on. But you met someone who is a -2. And together you are blissfully 0.

And when years have passed, when long lost friends still expect you to be unhappy, because you will always be that much shorter of reaching the ideal, because you are the one who was supposed to always yearn, are they surprised? Maybe, maybe not. Pleasantly? Maybe, maybe not. And you can't decide, because frankly you don't care anymore. But the sadness in their eyes? You really do wish they had never grown up. Because they can now see. Because you now, don't have the sob story they seek. And you feel almost guilty. But you just don't have one. And you say a silent prayer of thanks.

You have finally, let life catch up.

You are 25 at 25.

Of rains and flames

2007-08-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

I am stupid sometimes. Like really stupid. But only s o m e t i m e s. I mean like once in a really rare shade of blue of one of jupiter's moon's.
So sunday night, I was standing in the middle of the crossing, holding on to Mister's hand, waiting to cross the road. I suddenly noticed how it was raining on the side we were about to cross over to while there wasn't even the loop of the 'd' of a drop of rain where we were standing and I very excitedly mentioned this to him. To which he gave me the most incredulous look ever and pointed upwards to the overbridge under which we were standing.

Yes, I turned a really rare shade of red.

But my other beetroot moment is a family joke now, which my brother uses to break the ice with every new member of my in-laws that he meets. This was when my mom, my brother and I were visiting a close cousin's wife for lunch. She had a couple of floating candles sitting pretty and all lit up in a small bowl in the centre of the dining table. While we were being served, I was looking at the candles absently, and for some reason, I just c o u l d n o t for the life of me figure out how a candle is put out. I was wondering if one could splash water on it or hold the wick between two fingers in the foolhardy teenage way, or what? How? How do you put out a candle? I was 20, ladies and gentleman. And I asked the question out aloud "Didi, how do you put out these candles?" And while my mom just stared at me like what was I thinking and my brother couldn't believe his ears that this was happening with his fork dangling in mid-air and his mouth open, my cousin just asked "Matlab?" and my brother goes "By blowing it out I suppose!".

"Oh"

Atleast I now know how.

The Waiting Game

2007-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Anticipation
is a funny thing. It is
a giddy high, while it lasts.
And the very pits, when you
realize, you are the only one
playing.

Saffron, White and Green

2007-08-13T01:53:00.000-07:00

When an entire cineplex audience remains silent and calmly seated until after the credits have rolled and the screen goes blank, you can say that what happened was a brilliant movie.

Go see 'Chak De India'!!

Next time, let it be the sixties

2007-08-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

There is something so completely charming about these movies, I am more than engrossed every time I sit down with one. Without the jazz, even if there is no story, it still feels so real. Amol Palekar's shirts! I have not seen those patterns anywhere except my dad's college photos. I mean, who wears red concentic circles on blue checks?? With bell pants?? And Vidya wearing sarees to college, with two plaits, two folded plaits?? AND a different flower in her hair everyday?? But I love it, it is weird, anachronistic, and I love it.
Wide delhi roads without flyovers, DTC buses a shade of blue and white not green and yellow, bus conductors, tickets, non a/c train compartments not metro and low-cost airlines, the big black telephone which goes trrrinnngggg trrrinnnggggg not dial 111 for caller tunes, wind blowing away hair into a complete mess not perfectly gelled spiked or straightened dos, bindi and kohl not lipgloss and 12x mascara, cabs at the Gateway of India and autos at India Gate- an outing by itself not hawaiin shack and turquoise cottage, big wide balconies in delhi houses and only windows in bombay flats not gurgaon and vashi, coffee house and not Mc D's, vanilla/chocolate/strawberry/tooty-fruity not DBC and Cookie Crumble, Chinese not Mainland China or China Bowl?, pearl strings not diamond danglers, monstrously big sunglasses and not Gucci, a lecturer's job for 400/- a month and not a six figure package with perks, yellow scooters and yezdi motorcycles and not honda civics and chevy aveos, walks in parks without as much as an arm around the shoulder not making out in lounge restrooms, non-modular kitchens with blackened utensils not clinically clean stainless steel kitchen tops, melamine tableware in primary colours not corelle-handle without care; a time when letters and crisp telegrams achieved what email, instant chat and sms now can not.
Heck, when was the last time you saw an actress repeat her costume and not one but three in the same movie? When was the last time we heard "pehle apni chappal ki marammat karwao, mai tumhare saath aise chalungi to sab hamara mazaak udayenge?" When was the last time you told your boy friend "ye haath hatao kandhe se, mujhe aisi besharmi bilkul pasand nahi?"
I have seen old photographs of my parents from those days. Mummy has told umpteen tales of wearing saris and going for projector shows of movies in clubs during her college days which rang very true while I had my nose buried in 'A Suitable Boy'. Papa on the other hand has recounted endless tales of DTC buses and cinema halls from his Delhi college days. How his friend and he would stand endlessly chatting at a bus stand on the ring road? How he used to let the mudrika go and take a complete round and come back, just so to get another hour out of the house. How his dad found his bell pants ridiculous and thought he was in wasted company. And I wonder about their love stories. Did they ever fall in love? Did they atleast have a crush? Did they ever pass a secret letter in a book to someone? Did they atleast want to?
The simplicity of the tales highlights the intensity of the emotions I think. With all the jazz and unnecessary visual distractions and obstacles out of the way, the eyes talk, the quiver of a lip says more than a show of cleavage. Everything else stripped to a bare minimum, emotions are raw and palpable. It is totally believable that a girl in her early twenties is torn between an intense responsible serious man and a cheerful careless honest guy. It is totally believable that a pushy man gets his way over the unmanipulative one and the woman has no choice even if her heart tells her otherwise. It is totally believable that he wants three cups of tea in the morning and not diet coke. It is totally believable that the male lead wears a white kurta pyjama for more than half the movie. It is so totally believable that the wife carries a packet of matches and knows her husband will forget every single time and that something as simple as that is a visual treat of a scene. There are no wordy testaments to undying love, just quiet understanding and reserved passions. And no hysterics. Did you ever notice that? I mean nobody ever cries a river and howls and shouts. There is so much restraint, even in times of seemingly unbearable pain. Absolutely nothing to jarr your senses and make you numb against the feel of the movie.

Sometimes I wonder if we have told all our stories and there is nothing more left to tell?
Sometimes I wonder if I was born twenty years too late.

kai baar yun hi dekha hai
ye jo mann ki seema rekha hai
man todne lagta hai..

katra katra milti hai

2007-07-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

I lean in
for a peck, a kiss
or just a cosy brush.
He gestures,
with urgency,
to some unreachable spot
on his back, which needs scratchin'
-always.

Y'day-
he bade me,
to his side (left)
of the king-sized bed
with a lazy, un-brushed drawl.
I rolled my eyes.
I asked "Where?"
I closed in.
He turned his face,
left,
then right,
then left again.
Sighed,
and drifted back to sleep.

Y'day-
from under the folds,
of a pale pink bedcover
my smile winked at me.

On a pink day

2007-07-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

My posts are usually stoic and impersonal. Or perhaps personal in a strangely detached way. They sometimes reflect exactly what I am feeling at that very moment when I click open a notepad window and just let my fingers do the talking. At other times, they are written in retrospect. Never in regret, just how it was. Even in the few posts which are definitely not derived from personal experiences, a part of me creeps in, perhaps as fillers, as pieces of dreams seen with my eyes wide open or reality un-seen because of eyes tightly shut. It is difficult I think to completely seal yourself and write without letting your thoughts smudge the ink a bit. The few times that I do write personal posts with boundaries and form and frames, I feel like this is a conversation I could instead be having with someone. Writing to me, is a medium where I can say something which I have not quite figured out in my head yet. I can see it from so many perspectives that I am not sure which one I really subscribe to. Or maybe I subscribe to multiple perspectives all at the same time. And in that mess, I need a clean slate to put it on, a slate entirely my own, and while I am at it, I don't want someone else to bring his own chalk and add his own lines. So having a hassle free notepad window, with its limited fonts and black n white spaces, lets me be me. Here's a rare digression.

I am a very intuitive person where people are concerned. I can sometimes tell in a flash, whether I will or will not get along with someone and how well too. But that said, I think I can also be extremely polite towards people I hardly like. I can listen to unimaginable amounts of pure drivel, I can tolerate sappy sob stories, I am patient with the get-on-your-nerves types, I am mostly 'the one who will never scream'. I have minimally succeeded at changing that a bit, but I am still on that side if you know what I mean. But that said too, there is always this part of me which mentally shuts off in the first few minutes on meeting someone if I know there is no potential for serious friendship. I sometimes chide myself about that(yes, I am capable of feeling guilty over that too!) but this thankfully is something that I have not been able to change. So still, once in a few years I meet that one person, who owing to his/her physical proximity becomes the one person who I call a 'friend' and then even though distances separate and times change and people change, the fact that he/she was a 'friend' at some point never changes.

In 9th grade, we had just been separated into hindi and sanskrit sections. I abhorred sanskrit. So even though Hindi was for the 'weaker' students and largely considered less scoring, I convinced my parents to let me take it up. The fact that my crush then, was also taking up hindi, of course had little bearing on this decision. Just when I had given up all hope of ever finding a friend again, if not a friend atleast a mutually tolerable female acquaintance with whom I could share a seat, there was this girl who came from nowhere, or so it seemed, and totally to my rescue, or so it seemed again. For why would anybody in their sane mind ever leave the nation's capital and one of the finest schools there to be in a secluded place, 2 hours from the nearest town-like civilization, in a place where people actually cared about what the neighbours did in both good and bad ways. The day she had joined, I had known that I like her and I want to be sitting next to her, and I swear I never told my mom, a teacher in the same school, to arrange anything to that effect. This was the era in which teachers decided who sits where so that the potential couples are seated as far from each other as possible. Because, kids those days, I tell you. It was the beginning of the cable TV era, and you never knew how much you could trust the opposite sexes in each other's company. Also this was just when the 'I hate boys' and 'I hate girls' phase was wearing off and we were being taught reproduction in biology class, with snickers and sideways glances. Growing up in an extremely conservative locality where the rest of the world was waking up to the wonders of the internet and technology, I remember being completely baffled when a classmate showed me a printout of her chat transcript with her parents in bangalore, we were very much like the proverbial toad in the well. I was so scared of computers and all things computer-y, I would vow to never touch one as soon as I was done with all the compulsory courses where we defined the keyboard, monitor and CPU endlessly, with diagrams thrown in for good measure. My point is, that she was my first window to the unfettered world outside, where you need not have thought, 'oh my, but what will people say'. R was a complete tomboy and proudly so. She released me in a way. She taught me to dream, to think and to voice. We could giggle endlessly, we could solve analytical problems for NTSE hours on end while completely neglecting the rest of the subjects. We once spent hours trying to prove Pythagoras wrong. Geometry was just one of our many common loves ;). She was the first girl in my life who enjoyed books as much as me, and I never stopped being jealous that she was better read. The first girl who actually gave me competition in class because she was intelligent and not because of rote abilities. She almost always had a differnet take on things, one which was always more optimistic, more real, and more logical :) I would continuously oscillate between feeling jealous and being inspired. I will always owe a huge part of me to her, though we don't talk as much now, nor can we ever be on the same wavelength again, but she will always hold pride of place in my heart as my first 'friend'. Then in Delhi, class 11, I met a snooty, nose in the air sorts through parents who happened to get talking outside my coaching centre. I gave her my still unpractised 'what-the-hell' look. Sheer coincidence that first day of school we found out that we will be in the same school, in the same class and section. What started off as a measured conversation, since she was the city girl and I was that girl from the place which generates electricity but no-one has ever heard of, went on to be a series of night long conversations, where she realized she could leave her city pretences behind and I knew I could learn a trick or two to dress up and still stay grounded. Again 'friends' for life, though we don't talk as much as I would like either and we both moved on to new 'friends', still. Another friend during the same time(yes this was my lucky period), perhaps the only one with whom friendship has blossomed more in the years after we separated, which is strange, because I am the I need you to be with me physically kind of person. She was someone who I thought lasting friendship will be difficult to achieve with, she was way more refined and a lot more airy at the time, and yet here we are. Years have mellowed her, and I have learnt from her to say 'no', so we gel much better now, across the seven seas, feeling the same emotions. There was a lull thereafter for want of the one girl'friend', perhaps He was making up for giving me two in the previous phase. The dearth took a toll in more ways than one and marked the most tumultous unstructured years of my life. Moving out of home for work, brought with it the brightest three months that I still fondly look back upon. I used to think I am too much of a loner to ever feel at home in a crowd, but here was one crowd I completely loved. One friend again, who could be rude in unimaginable ways for the sake of being right and she taught me how I had to do the right things over the apparently right things even if it was at a cost which could seem unbearable. Another lesson learnt, another 'friend' for life. Moving cities, I didn't quite find another one for some time. And then one fine day there was this cute giggly thing standing behind me and the minute I was introduced, I saw a 'friend'. There is something about eyes I think. I can spot honest eyes, or maybe there really is such a thing as vibes. But sometimes you know, it takes a minute to gel and yet it takes years to finally bond. Because you are never sure, that much and not quite right there. You always want to bond, but before you know you can, your time runs out. You do all the right things together, and yet that final seal of this is right, takes a while. Because you never quite know, how much you really do mean to the other. And it hits you both on one rainy night in July. When there isn't much you can do, except read each other's blogs and miss the time which could have been more than what it was.

Girl'friends'? they never go out of fashion.

No flowers for you

2007-07-06T02:10:00.000-07:00

They amble past
my clay creations,
in sizes big and small
in colours dull and bright
some raw- a shade of ochre
some polished-
a deep mahagony.

I smile when I see
ooh-aahs over the less
perfect ones, the ones
with unusual quirks, the
ones with reckless
patterns. For
how unique a mantlepiece
would that one make.
Upkeep be damned, for
there would be servants
and novelty; comfort
more so, for
they like high heels
and envious compliments.

(Behind closed doors, on
retrospective nights,
there is always ale and
the one good friend to
help forget.)

My mud caked palms
meanwhile
caress the near perfect
vase, with the sensible
curves around the void
and the warm glow
near the mouth,
sitting
un-checked-out, beside
the cash register.
For the tiny chip on the neck,
well- That
can not be ignored.

Etc

2007-06-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

I have inside me so much fodder today, I wonder if it will all fit in one post or whether my time will run out before my words do. And they are all unrelated pieces, so I also wonder if they belong together. And having said that, I am wondering why it is all in my head together, today? And why am I 'wondering' so much?! But I am also worried, that I will miss out on mentioning everything, because I might forget. And I hate that. Something inside me physically crawls and hurts if I lose a chain of thought. And with every line that I type, I am being inundated with more things that I want to, today, let out. For instance how I am so overwhelmingly reminded of this poem by Emily Dickinson that I am so overwhelmingly in love with.

The Lost Thought

I felt a cleavage in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.

~Emily Dickinson

That is EXACTLY how I feel when I can't think back and reach whatever it was that I was going to be thinking about. Of all the abstract feelings I feel(what's with me today?), the only one which I have managed to see in a slightly tangible form on paper, has to be this 'lost thought' phenomenon. Anyways, having digressed way off, I have to get back where I started. Imagine having a whole assortment of things to talk about and still managing to digress off that!! And now this! Ok wait, stop.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was going through a lot of archived mails in my mailbox today, the one I have had for the longest time, while blog-hopping simultaneously and I was wondering if people ever feel as strongly about having inbox anniversaries as they do about blogs? Aren't your mailbox reserves the equivalent of hand written letters you sent and received just like blogs are the equivalent of journals(for some)? And yet have you ever stopped and wondered how long you have had 'the one' e-mail account? Before the gmails came in, about the hotmails and the yahoos? And the first mail you received in your yahoo inbox when you were in first year of college which was like all of 8 years ago?
I was inundated with a sea of emotions today going through the mails I had sent, the replies I had given and the mails I had received, almost like "Did I really live that life?" Which brings me to "One"(Bach) yet again. I always wonder, and I think it is unhealthy too; still; about 'what if's and 'Had I's. What if I really had gone for that MS in UMich, all the mail exchanges with some nice desi grad student about lodging and aid, the ecstasy of the visa and the rationale(?) behind staying back, the disappointment of the loss, but the hope of going back some day, there is a lifetime to do what you want.. No? Is there? And then picking up from where I left and trying to find satisfaction and happiness in what is, and the reassurance to self, that there is always time to do what you want? That tomorrow is always a new day. But then how come, at 25, I feel like my time has run out? Hey time, wait, you said you will always be around with a helping hand, what happened? How come I suddenly feel like that was such a long time ago and instead of looking ahead, am already looking back at "What if I had" and "Had I then what"? How come something that meant a world to me at one point in my life, no longer means much beyond a few mega bytes stored on some server somewhere? How come I didn't know about this then? And where is all this going? How come relationships which were once worshipped with dedicated poetry, no longer mean anything more than word docs in comic sans font and shades of pink? How come we used the words forever and never and always and '20 years from now' and memories so liberally? What does forever mean anyway? Who has seen forever, and how do you know never? What If? Had I? And how do you know anything is for keeps? And always? What about that? Always what? Always when? Always?? Where does always start anyway? Why do we use these words the way we do? What do you know really? Thinking of life 20 years from now? I know all the crap about not knowing how it will be and all, but then aren't we still working towards that life 20 years from now at every point in our lives? Don't we always have a vision all the time? And doesn't that vision change irritatingly often? The entire set of people around you change. Your priorities are reset, your life works differently, and you are telling me there are things which are "for keeps"?! How come everybody else looks at you like you will never change, like you will always be the way you are and make you believe that too? Why never? and Whytf always? What if I changed? What if I didn't want to? And what if I did want to? And what if I had to? Why did nobody ever(yes) factor that in? Why didn't they give me that space to atleast turn on my side, that room to breathe, to look away and get snared? Why no courage? Ever(yes)? To say no. To say yes. If I didn't know, shouldn't He have told, shouldn't He tell everyone who doesn't know? That there is a web, there always will be and a different life awaits at the end of all roads. Not necessarily better or worse, just different, and you can't have it all figured out now, or ever(yes). And since when did that cease to be a source of comfort, that the destinations are just all different, not necessarily better or worse, just different. Why does that make me so uncomfortable? That there are other my-lives out there, real un-lived lives just over the immediate horizon which could have been, not necessarily better or worse(again), but just different? Surely one should be able to let it go, the thought that there are multiple different(again) lives out there, and I am living just one, and I am doing ok, not good not bad, ok. It should be a source of comfort don't u think? Why does it disturb?

Not hurt, not please, just disturb.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And is it just me or does everyone have those days when everything is a sign? An omen, not good not bad, just an omen. The dates which mean something to you now, appear magically in past correspondence and past always(es), and the dates which meant a lot sometime in the past, magically reappear now, in your present, in this always. How come out of the 365 odd days, only 'your' dates appear in random fictional pieces and de-ja vu blog posts? Like the new words that you didn't know existed, and having checked Word Web, they appear 4 times in the next hour? Is it the matrix? Is it a sign? Is a morbid association serious or a happier one trivial? Is there any depth at all to this?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And what do people you knew but don't anymore, feel about you now? The people who were a part of that always, and are not even on the periphery of this one? The ones who used the word forever, to which you replied always? And the ones who thought you will go far and then got busy with their lives assuming you did go far, while all you did was take the next left? and then 100 mtrs into the next right, stopped on the first signal?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And what have you learnt? You, the I? Did you learn that the always changes? If you did, then wtf are you doing typing in any of what you just have? And if you haven't then how come you feel just ok, not good not bad -

Just OK.

Bored

2007-06-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

There are days

when six degree jerks

measure not my time ticks,

instead I travel weary

with forlorn left clicks

Melted Coins

2007-06-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

There is something about the lingering taste of chocolate on a rainy rainy day.
On a hot summer day, the feel of chocolate is cloyingly sticky. On a cold winter one, one is too eager to get the blob inside and broken into heat producing carbs to let the taste linger. But on a blurred, rain-soaked, brush-stroked, pouring day, one would let it roll around in the mouth, let it melt and enter all crevices before licking tiny bits off the lips. The taste of chocolate is so distinct, and it lingers on so long on the tongue that I almost believe them sometimes.

Them who say chocolate alleviates depression.

Something Ancient Deepens

2007-06-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

Today I want to explain what I mean by mediocrity and why I feel trapped in mediocrity and why even though it bothers the hell out of me almost all the time, there are still moments when I am just grateful for being so.
Mediocrity to me is not banality. Mediocrity to me is not riding into oblivion. Mediocrity to me is not about being negligible. It is not about being on the fringes of the jigsaw. But when you cut all that out, being half way up what is left, is mediocrity.
Being almost there in quite a few ways, but then never quite. That is mediocre. Being aware and in touching distance, but never quite stretching your hand. Window shopping, but never quite whimsical enough to walk in. Fingering the boundaries, but never quite bursting through. Testing the waters, but never quite diving in. Standing on your toes, but never quite taking off. That is mediocre.
But on those rare good days, I feel grateful, for knowing that there really is a jigsaw, the shopglass is for looking through, that there is a world outside the bubble, that it is an ocean and not a pool and that the sky really is beckoning. Its a difficult state to exist in, but I am pulling through, I will make it I think before I give up. Or so I believe.

---------------------

Too technical to be a full-time artist and too artistic to be a full-time technologist. Too ambitious to be a homemaker, too concerned to be a nine-to-five-er. Too attached to break free, and too independent to stay in the shadows. Too empty to be prolific, too full to stay quiet. Too warm to be a loner, too withdrawn to reveal myself. Too real to philosophize, too amorphous to be cast. Too philanthropic for capitalism, too meritocratic for socialism. Too involved for ascecis, too detached for saturday nights.
Voiceovers for NatGeo and teaching kindergarten kids, making a slick advertisement and volunteering at an NGO, writing poetry and coding in C. A little bit of all of the above and not quite a whole lot of one.

Too earthy for glass-painting, but too colourful for pottery.

My roots want to grow deeper unfettered, my branches burst forth only to retreat into a perfect glob of green.
I am one fourth above, without, and three parts beneath, within.

I am the tree. I always have been.

Shall we?

2007-06-01T00:24:00.000-07:00

I like 'shall'
wayyy more than 'will'
despite W-n-M's claim
that it is over the hill

Too Miss

2007-05-30T01:56:00.000-07:00

When you stay in a place for a long time, you get used to it. The good and the bad of it, the nice and the not so nice, the ordinary and the extraordinary. And when you are not there anymore, you miss it all.

There was a certain comfort in waking up every morning and going to office. Because I knew what to expect. In terms of what is required of me, and in terms of what I will receive from others. Even the little surprises each day, were predictably pleasant or pleasantly predictable. The conversation, the gossip, the jokes, the leg-pulling, the evening tea, everything had a certain routine. I felt like I was in control, like everything was happening in my cognizance and I was an integral part of it. Like I would be missed if I was not around. And there was a sense of security about it. It kept me kicked about going to work. There is something charming about a shared sense of joblessness or usefulness for that matter. And something equally charming about feeling irreplaceable which is rare in my field of work. But a longer post about that some other time. Moving to a new place, I am surprised that I miss even the not-so-likeable people as much as I miss my old friends. I miss my morning assam tea from coffee day. I miss my corner seat. I miss the huge window which was always spotlessly clean. I miss the bamboo grove outside. I miss turning around in my swivel chair to pull a fast one on my colleague. I miss watching people talk on the phone in the outdoor corridor. And in idle moments, I would theorize about what the call might be. I would read expressions, was it the glee in talking to an old friend or was it somebody new in his/her life. The serious expression was for the perpetual job seekers, taking telephonic interviews. The swift calls are calls from parents. Which reminds me of the character who used to be glued to the office phone all day long, just so he could complete all his local calls and didn't have to use his personal phone. I miss him too! I miss being able to find something funny and message it to friends across the cubicle on the internal messenger. I miss reading my C-n-H strip everyday. It used to land in my mailbox at 4ish every evening. And unless I was really caught up with what I was doing, I used to start getting restless at 3:50 and would keep eyeing the outbox to announce new mail. I miss having friends who shared my enthusiasm for something really trivial but infinitely profound or laced with dirty innuendo. I miss being able to get up and coax everyone down for a tea-break. I miss my white board. I miss using the marker to scribble phone numbers, to scribble IP addresses, to scribble diagrams, to scribble quotes, or to have friends come and draw caricatures. I miss cursing the build servers. I miss being so absorbed in work that before I knew it, it was time to go home. I miss the occasional festive celebrations. I miss talking at length about wearing a saree for the traditional day and then always giving it a miss the next morning just to catch a few more winks. I miss wondering where dinner is coming from. As much as I yearned for packed lunch back then, and as much as I cribbed about the canteen food, I sometimes, just sometimes, now wish otherwise. I miss the chaos of the city in office hours. I miss the office loo with its fancy mirror. I miss the umbrellas. I miss the bicycles. I miss seeing the same unnamed faces over and over again. I miss the spaces. I miss the sky. I miss the grassy paths. I miss my shoe heel getting stuck between two granite
slabs every single day on the way to lunch. I miss swearing at that and walking funny to make sure my foot lands on the slabs just right. I miss watching the rain. I miss cribbing that rainy days should be long drive days. I miss watching the occasional monkey. I miss fighting over the air-conditioner thermostat. I miss the sound of my name. I miss the moniker that was my mail-id. I miss the passwords. I miss bumping into acquaintances near the water cooler and having to make polite conversation. I miss the voices. I miss the laughter. I miss the chocolates. I miss the dense and I miss the bright. I miss the creativity we used to bring to the mundane.

I miss the connection. I feel small. I feel alone.

Change has usually, in the past, been pleasant for me. And the few times that it started to go sour, there has almost always been some divine intervention to well, change things again. I am hoping for a miracle.

And soon.

Today I surprised myself

2007-05-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

I stepped out of my house today for work, and opened my umbrella against the bright sun. Ten steps and the local doodhwala wolf-whistled "o chattri". I stopped, turned around and stared at him. Pointed to my sandal and said "nikaal ke maroon kya?"."Asshole" I muttered under my breath. To which he lowered his vision and cycled away. Pause. No seriously. Pause. I have NEVER done that. NEVER EVER. NEVER EVER EVER.
Eve-teasing is pretty much a way of life and considering that now I have spent enough time in 4 big cities, I have been subjected to it often. Courtesy blank-noise , the issue has been very active, atleast in the blogosphere over the last couple of years. We have read accounts from S, M, L, XL women of all ages about their harrowing or mild, nevertheless frustrating experiences. And I have had my share of deja-vu moments while reading those. But never did I gather enough courage to even write about it under this guise of virtual anonymity, let alone recount it to someone else in person. Further, I have read, heard and seen women react to all of this, sometimes subtly, at other times strongly. And it always arouses enormous respect and longing for that kind of courage. And I have often asked myself, why I find it so difficult to react to it or atleast share it with someone to ease the discomfort. I have admired a couple of close friends for the way they refuse to take nonsense of any kind and stand up for themselves. And I have always yearned to have even an ounce of that strength, to be able to turn around and slap someone for misbehaving. Blame it on a conservative conventional upbringing in unconventional radical surroundings, that while I am fully aware of compromising situations and know how I should react, I still fail to bring myself to actually do it. Which just multiplies the frustration.

I was 7 and was out for dinner with my parents and a friend of Dad's. While my Dad and his friend went up to the restaurant, I wanted to go back to the car to get something. My mom came along and on the way back, there was a foreigner at a Paan shop. I still remember that he was bald, very well dressed and was buying a pack of cigarettes. He politely asked my mom if I was her daughter. To her "yes", he asked "Can I call you after sometime?" - My mom just looked away and took me upstairs. I looked back, past my mom's saree pallu at his face, and his gaze was following her. All the while I was wondering what he meant. I understood the english perfectly, but I completely failed to comprehend why he would want to call her. But the look on my mom's face, and her tightened grip on my hand conveyed an unspoken fear. Just the thought that questions like this needed to be ignored rather than answered took root. That it was bad, and need not be shared. That there is nothing you can do about it. That no one needs to be told, not even your husband. "Would Papa not go and thrash the guy out of his senses?" "Why don't you tell him?" "Why not ma?"
Fast forward to 13, and I am out shopping for my first ever lehenga. The salesman insists that he hold the lehenga against me to show how it looks in the mirror. And he gropes. And he smiles. And while my parents discuss which one looks better, my eyes well up with tears. I silently say no to each one and move out. The salesman tells my dad "koi baat nahi sir, phir aayiega.." while he smirks looking straight at me. And in that instant, I wish him death. And then feel guilty for wishing someone bad. So I say "ok God, maybe make him meet with an accident and lose the arm he used to grope me" "Will you please?" "..Please?" Just so I find satisfaction knowing that he didn't get away with this. And I still remember peering out of the car window while we crossed the shop again with the hope that maybe my staring hard enough would make it actually happen. First day of college, after twelfth, I was wearing a salwar suit. A SALWAR SUIT. And glasses! (to the detractors who say it only happens to immodestly clad women) On the way back from DU. With the cotton dupatta covering me well enough. Before I know it, in the crowded bus, a huge man behind me, brings his hand around me and well.. I could go on but it is so futile. Really. The same discomfort. Followed by trying to put things in perspective to figure out what the source of the discomfort is. Because the thought does not cross your mind. And then you realize that really, his hand IS where it should be not. And it really is an unnatural position to be standing in. And that he really is pressing you against himself. My hands don't even reach the handrails of the bus. With a pile of books in the other, I am trying to think clearly but it does not happen. Because the discomfort, and fear cloud your senses, the tears veil your eyes. And it is a good five minutes before you find some semblance of courage to react. I turn around, apalled that it is actually possible to have the gall to put your hand all the way around a girl and hold still in a bus packed to the seams. And then when faced with the victim's semi-scared semi-angry look, calmly release, find your way to the door, jump out of a moving bus and laugh a full-throated inebriated laugh from the pavement because she is still looking scared and dazed and she has still not spoken a word. Yes, and I still get goosebumps with that.
More recently, in Bombay, while I sat with a couple of more friends at a table in an open air restaurant, this maniacal guy whistles and points to his crotch, at his unzipped throbbing pants. I was 22 then. Older and wiser one would say. And I still went numb. No one had ever before flashed at me like that. And here I was, finding it difficult, yet trying to find "decent" words to describe it to my friend who had just returned after ordering. She quickly made a mock call to the police and the guy scampered away, but I had the fright of my life. I somehow always fear that if I ever react to one of these people, they will hunt me down at a vulnerable hour and take revenge in a more horrible way. Who is to say if he is crazy enough to flash in public on a busy mumbai street at 7 in the evening, he is not crazy enough to stalk or worse still, rape.

This is why I am really surprised that I reacted the way I did today morning. The guy was puny in build, which helped I guess. Moreover, when I did stare at him, he looked puzzled. Perhaps he did not expect an acknowledgement at all. What also helped I think was that I was taken off-guard. I was merrily walking along. So in that fleeting moment before I could feel threatened, I actually felt surprised and somewhere inside felt the urge to abuse. Though "chappal nikaal ke maaroon kya?" is nowhere close to abuse (I will even admit it makes me chuckle now that I say it), I still think it's a start. He lowered his gaze because he felt ashamed. Atleast for the rest of the day there won't be any more victims, for he would stand fore-warned.
But tommorow's milk delivering rounds? Will there be someone else?
Maybe.
Actually I think yes.

Chuckle

2007-05-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

Mumma is here. She is feeding me in heaps and mounds.
I wonder if the posts around here, will gain a few pounds.

Void

2007-05-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

There was this chasm inbetween. For them, it was a foot-wide. For her, it was an eternity. A one way journey into nothingness. How could she jump across? All she could see from up here was a swarm of people on the side of the building, imploring her to jump. "It is nothing" they said. It is safe. It is just a foot. She saw arms flailing about, mouths urging her to jump. It was such a chaotic blur, she couldn't make out which mouth belonged to which pair of arms. The words were too heavy to float all the way up, but she knew they wanted her to jump across. She could, however, also see the world inbetween. And only she could. For they didn't know. This lady, in bright emerald green, with the freshly laundered clothes. A makeshift clothesline, with a pair of wooden poles in an inverted 'V' on either side. Ropes strung across. She could hear the crunchy sound of water hitting the parched caked terrace top, while the lady twisted the clothes to ease out the very last drop of water, before spreading them out to dry. And the scent of the wet earth wafting up. The sight of water evaporating as soon as it hit the ground. How could she ignore this luring reality hitting her senses and instead trust the blur to take the tiny step over and above and across? Would the gap not widen, the moment she perched atop the side and lifted one foot to take that tiny step? No matter how far she stretched, she was convinced she will be just that much short of reaching across. She would slip inbetween, and break a leg, an arm or both, or die. Or maybe not. But would she ever return to the world she knew? She was shouting for help, trying to ignore the lady in green. Her voice would only travel so far though. To the lady in green and back. And words coagulated in her throat. No matter how hard she tried, nothing came out. Only a pained, distressed, scared expression on her face.
And then the lady looked up, mildly bewildered.

That is how all her dreams finish. Different situations. Very vivid. But always the same gagged scream in the end. Always caught in the throat. And the effort to let it out makes her helplessly cry. Breaks her sleep, it does. So she never finds out if she fought it out or she gave in. She never finds out, how she fought it if she did. And how she went down if she didn't. Only the premise of the battle, the desperation to fight and the gagged scream. Never who won- life or her or both. And how.

Or was it not a battle to be fought at all.

How much?

2007-05-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

We had 'a fine dinning
experience' at
'The Restaurant'
yesterday.
(Mumma would say,
1/5 for creativity, and "meet me
after class" for spelling)
I sit crosslegged on
the high-backed chair,
in the dim-lit
over-cooled corner.
(The place was so empty,
we had 7 people waiting on us.)
Drowsily I tell him,
"We are too much in love
to be married"
(Or so I am told.)
With a mouthful of reshmi kebab
he mulls n tells,
"Yeah maybe next time
we will go home and
I will make u cook"

At my new office, I use
"my husband..." liberally,
to get used to the sound
and to ward off people.
It works well.
On both counts.
(But seriously, we are
too much in love to be married.)

Games At Twilight

2007-04-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

Was it class 9 or 10 that we had a story titled 'Games at
twilight' in our English Lit books. Anita Desai I think. I
remember how scared I used to be of playing 'hide-n-seek'
as a kid. I could totally identify with the character in
this story when I first read it. It wasn't a great story.
I mean it did not exactly hold your interest or have a
spectacular ending or any particularly strong message. It
was ordinary in all respects, purely pedantic. And yet
there was this sense of deja-vu to it for me. The story in
a nutshell was about this young boy who is out playing
hide-n-seek with his friends. He finds this hiding place
where he is sure he wouldn't be found, and he actually
isn't. So he keeps hiding until nightfall while the other
kids forget about him and move on to another game. So we
were supposed to appreciate the entire gamut of emotions
he goes through in that evening. It was supposed to be
sad, and perhaps it was, but not for teenagers reading it
at 15. I always thought the story was more suitable for a
younger audience. Nevertheless, it reminded me of my own
memories of games at twilight. I was shit-scared of
'dhappa'. So I used to insist I wouldn't play the den
('denner'?!). I was ok with hiding, but the prospect of me
seeking and somebody jumping on me from behind screaming
'dhappa' was too much for me to take. And besides I was a
really 'unsporty' kid. I was scared of running around,
jumping across terraces, climbing lofts, playing kho-kho,
throw-ball(the girly game), basketball, everything. I
never wanted to get hurt because I used to be really
scared of hospitals. So I never wanted to do anything
which could possibly get me hurt. Cardgames and boardgames
it was for me, and still is I guess. Declamations and
essay writing were way safer. Though I always rued the
fact that I was such a coward. I really wanted to be more
sporty and participate. But all I was good for was
cheerleading and 'marchpast' I think.
I spent the best part of my childhood years in a township
next to the thermal power plant my dad worked for. And
growing up in that secluded world was an experience in
itself. We used to play with the same kids in the evening
that we went to school with in the daytime. So it was like
staying in a hostel with your parents. I was never much of
a TV person. So this was fun. Innumerable games, some
which get passed on from generation to generation and
refuse to die, while others we make up all the time.
Chain-chain, dark room, vish amrit, oonch neench ka
papada, crocodile, coconut, what colour you want( i can
still remember the sing-song way we used to say that),
london statue, and others which I still know the hows of
but have forgotten their names. And the video games. I had
an Atari box and I even used to beat the computer at
boxing, those unsophisticated black and red figures moving
up and down n left n right with the joystick. For years I
thought KO was just OK spelt backwards!
Apart from the fun we had, and I am sure we never thought
about anything else at that time, the games had a large
part to play in the way we grew up and what we are. There are way too many memories to list out here, but when
I look at children around today with their playstations
and beyblades, I feel a twinge of sadness. Those cars and
figures with futuristic capabilities and multidimensional
movements and cheat codes. I am sure they are a lot of
fun, but what about memories? And what about growing up?